I'm an avid Pc game player, and always try and have as few processes running in the background as possible, there is one service, or rather four instances of the one service, svchost.exe running all the time on my comp, and using up quite a lot of resources in the process. I've tried shutting down in the past but it just causes an illegal operation error where XP has to restart, or it shuts down and starts up again a few seconds later. Is this a common problem? It's been buggin me for ages...

svchost is a generic process that controls a variety of stuff, isn't it?

Info from Microsoft:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;250320 (Win2k)

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314056/EN-US/ (WinXP)

There's a description here:

http://www.liutilities.com/products/wintaskspro/processlibrary/svchost/

It is a legit part of Windows, but as that link says, some virus' can install themselves under that name. If it doesn't break apart from when you mess with it, then you're probably alright though.

Leave it running, anyway...

Rob.

How come there are three or four instances of it running at any one time? I would have thought running the .exe once would be enough?

They handle different things - there's 4 running on my machine at the moment, so it doesn't seem to be uncommon.

Or we've both got the same problem...

Rob.

Yup I've got 5 and according to "tasklist /svc" they're all running legit things.

svchost.exe                  888 RpcSs
svchost.exe                  964 AppMgmt, AudioSrv, BITS, CryptSvc, Dhcp,
                                ERSvc, EventSystem, helpsvc, HidServ,
                                lanmanserver, lanmanworkstation, Messenger,
                                Netman, Nla, RasMan, Schedule, seclogon,
                                SENS, SharedAccess, ShellHWDetection,
                                srservice, TapiSrv, TermService, Themes,
                                TrkWks, uploadmgr, W32Time, winmgmt,
                                WmdmPmSp, wuauserv, WZCSVC
svchost.exe                 1148 Dnscache
svchost.exe                 1176 LmHosts, RemoteRegistry, SSDPSRV, WebClient
svchost.exe                 1772 stisvc

try removing some unused things from msconfig as these can usually fire up this process.

Yup I've got 5 and according to "tasklist /svc" they're all running legit things.

svchost.exe                  888 RpcSs
svchost.exe                  964 AppMgmt, AudioSrv, BITS, CryptSvc, Dhcp,
                                ERSvc, EventSystem, helpsvc, HidServ,
                                lanmanserver, lanmanworkstation, Messenger,
                                Netman, Nla, RasMan, Schedule, seclogon,
                                SENS, SharedAccess, ShellHWDetection,
                                srservice, TapiSrv, TermService, Themes,
                                TrkWks, uploadmgr, W32Time, winmgmt,
                                WmdmPmSp, wuauserv, WZCSVC
svchost.exe                 1148 Dnscache
svchost.exe                 1176 LmHosts, RemoteRegistry, SSDPSRV, WebClient
svchost.exe                 1772 stisvc

Yours doesn't seem to be using as much in terms of resources, I think one of mine is using 18,000 or so, same as what explorer takes up...

Yours doesn't seem to be using as much in terms of resources, I think one of mine is using 18,000 or so, same as what explorer takes up...

Those are process id's, not resources consumed. None of mine are using much CPU, and memory sizes vary. Cross reference the image below to the list above and you'll get an idea.

I hereby give you this link with NO WARRANTY at all

http://www.blackviper.com/index.html

However I've not broken anything yet.

Reminds me I need to rebuild laptop...

Ah yes - a good egg old Black Viper... don't treat it all as gospel though.

SVCHOST.EXE = Service Host. It is a process which hosts amongst other things the .NET framework, COM+ components which have been set up to run in Application mode rather than Library mode.

Depending on what you have installed there can be absolutely loads of these little blighters running. There are instances where it is a virus-infection, but you of course run an up to date virus scanner (if not http://www.grisoft.com - do it now, it's free, it's legal and it works)

Some spyware can also hide itself this way, but with the command line commands as per previous posts by ncarring you can pretty much find out.

If you've not shut your machine down for ages, it can also clear crud out

One of my mates always takes about 5 minutes to shut down virtually every process except explorer when he's playing games, then uses System Mechanic 4 to recover and defragment his RAM. This gets his free memory up from about 270/512MB to 410/512MB. Me, I just bought more RAM instead, it saves a lot of ****ing about.

One of my mates always takes about 5 minutes to shut down virtually every process except explorer when he's playing games,

Dont try that with XP, kill the wrong thing and your machine will shutdown in 60 seconds.

Yep - one virus worked exactly that way, it shut down COM+ services completely which then causes windows to shut itself down

Great fun to try and fix. You have 60 seconds to kill the b*st*rd virus thread before it goes wrong...

Yep - one virus worked exactly that way' date=' it shut down COM+ services completely which then causes windows to shut itself down

Great fun to try and fix. You have 60 seconds to kill the b*st*rd virus thread before it goes wrong...[/quote']

I had that on my system, luckily I my computer is a dual-boot with XP and ME, so could go into ME and fix it from there, saved a lot of swearing, breaking of Monitors etc.

- I know what you mean

It was an interesting fight but the virus lost, as they eventually always do (sometimes due to wiping your HDD, but they loose, nevertheless :D )