What is svchost.exe?

Whenever you open Task Manager, you see svchost.exe processes, but not many people care about them. However, in a few cases, svchost.exe takes up a lot of RAM and CPU, causing abnormal computer performance. So what is svchost.exe specifically? Are they really necessary for your computer? The following article will answer those questions.

What is svchost.exe (Service Host)?

As explained by Microsoft, "svchost.exe is the name of a generic support process for services running from dynamic-link libraries (DLLs for short)". The concept is still somewhat vague for those who are not knowledgeable about information technology.

In recent years, Microsoft has changed many functions from using local Windows services (running .exe files) to dynamic link libraries (.dll files). From a programming perspective, this change makes better sense for code reuse and updating. However, the .dll file cannot be run directly from Windows like .exe, instead a shell loaded from an .exe executable will be used to host the above DLL services (if not understood). What is the shell, please refer to this article).

As such, svchost.exe is a system process that can host from one to many Windows services within the Windows NT operating system family.

Why are many svchost.exe processes working at the same time?

Grouping multiple services into a single process naturally conserves computer resources, which is of particular concern to NT designers because creating Windows processes takes more time and Consumes more memory than other operating systems (such as Unix).

However, if one of the services that causes the exception is not processed, the overall process may crash. In addition, defining component services may be more difficult for end users. Therefore, they have been separated into many separate processes.

Is it possible to turn off svchost.exe processes?

When svchost.exe processes show no sign of taking up a lot of resources, disabling them is not recommended. In fact, in modern versions of Windows, the handling of background services of the operating system has been simplified, so even disabling them will not bring much efficiency to the system.

Unless there is one or more svchost.exe consuming unusually large RAM or CPU resources, you can check the services related to it in Task Manager.

With Windows 10 or 8

The svchost.exe processes show up in the Processes tab under the name Service Host.

If a Service Host has multiple services inside, you can view these services by clicking on the expand arrow.

Right-click on any service, there are three options: Stop , Open that service or Search online for that service .

With Windows 7

The Task Manager in Windows 7 does not group processes in the same way, it only displays all instances of svchost.exe running.

In the Processes tab , right-click on a specific svchost.exe , then select Go to Service (s) .

Go to the Services tab of Task Manager , where services running in that svchost.exe process will appear in the currently selected state.

The full name of the service is displayed in the Description column , so you can choose to turn off unwanted services.

Can there be a "disguised" virus in the form of svchost.exe?

This is not impossible, but very difficult. To be sure, you can verify by right-clicking on the svchost.exe process you want to check, selecting Open file location . If the folder opened is WindowsSystem32 then rest assured that it is not a virus.

However, as mentioned above, there are a lot of svchost.exe running in Windows, so such a manual check would not be thorough. Instead, use the reliable antivirus software, because maybe there are other viruses on your computer?

Through this article, TipsMake.com introduced you to what svchost.exe is as well as some issues related to it. Hope the above information will be useful to you!