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svchost.exe?
Posted: Mon Nov 17, 2008 4:32 pm
by diaz1023
How many of these processes should be running? I figure that maybe 3 at the most, one for the user, one for the system and one for the network, but i am always seeing way more than that. Is that normal? when i try to stop some of them, I get the BSOD. Any input is greatly appreciated. I am using the machine in my sig. Thanks
Posted: Mon Nov 17, 2008 5:40 pm
by msnyder101
I just checked, and I personally have 5 running. I don't think having more then three should be any real concern. From what I just learned googling around, there are multiple instances of svchost b/c more vital utilities require there own process as to prevent a complete system crash if one instance fails. You killed a vital process causing the BSOD.
Posted: Mon Nov 17, 2008 7:38 pm
by rkawakami
From the horse's mouth:
Microsoft wrote:The Svchost.exe file is located in the %SystemRoot%\System32 folder. At startup, Svchost.exe checks the services part of the registry to construct a list of services that it must load. Multiple instances of Svchost.exe can run at the same time. Each Svchost.exe session can contain a grouping of services. Therefore, separate services can run, depending on how and where Svchost.exe is started. This grouping of services allows for better control and easier debugging.
I just checked this T23 I'm typing on. There's six instances of svchost.exe with Firefox, AVG 7.5, a couple of system tray utilities and wireless running.
ref:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314056
Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2008 2:01 am
by diaz1023
thanks for the replies, it seems that i should not really worry about it
Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2008 11:39 pm
by iamdmc
I have 13 instances of it running on Vista x64 and 4GB of RAM... and I'm only running Firefox with 2 tabs open.
Hmm... I hope Windows 7 is better
Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2008 11:55 am
by Nameless
As I recall, svchost.exe is also used in order to let DLLs be run as services. So svchost.exe shows up in task mgr, but it's actually a dll that's running/using the resources.
Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2008 4:10 pm
by steveg47
If you would really like to find out what each svchost is running download ProcessExplorer. It's like TaskManager only much, much better:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysi ... 96653.aspx
Posted: Thu Nov 20, 2008 1:12 am
by diaz1023
thanks for the tip, i downloaded and it worked great. It gave me a better description of the processes
