Meaning of svchost.exe

Microsoft help and support deem svchost.exe to be a “generic host process name for services that run from dynamic-link libraries (DLLs.)” Ok, well in simpler and english terms, the history behind it is that Microsoft transferred all of the files from the internal Windows services to .dll files, without actually using .exe files. This was deemed as a huge mistake because it means that each user are unable to open a .dll file from Windows as it has to be opened through a .exe file. Hence, the svchost.exe was programmed.

*Note .dll means dynamic link library and .exe is a file name extention meaning an executable file.

Why are there fourteen of these svchost.exe files running simultaneously?

Here, you can see all the services running and which ones are needed or not and be sure that the show processes from all users box is ticked.

Well, there are many of these similar programs running because if you think about it, your operating system, Windows, has many services that are important to run and thus if there was one huge svchost.exe file and it failed, the whole system would fall. Therefore, having indivisual files for these services would prevent any failures. You may be wondering what the services are for. It’s really quite simple. The services are ordered into congruent groups and each of these svchost.exe files are made for each specified group. For example one svchost.exe could be for the UI ( User Interface.)

Your role

As an admin of your PC/Laptop, you are able to stop unecessary services by disabling them. The key problem seem to have is finding which services are needed for each svchost.exe file. You can do this by the tasklist command or go-to-service tab which will be explained further down.

In addition, users may find they have a high CPU usage one indivisual svchost.exe file and if you know it is definitely an anomoly, you can restart the services under that name without anything being affected in the system.

Identifying and checking particular svchost.exe files from the Command Line – For Vista and XP.

To check which services are being hosted by specific svchost.exe files, you can use the tasklist command from the command prompt using the command:

tasklist /SVC

However, users tend not to use this command as the services that occur are unclear to the human eye.

Checking through Task Manager – Vista Only

In task manager, you can right-click on any svchost.exe file and then select the “Go to Service(s)” option. Thus, this will direct you to the Services Tab and highlight the services running under that svchost.exe file as seen below.

Using this option, it enables you to see the proper name under the Description heading, thus making it even easier to choose which services to cancel.

Disabling services via Control Panel – for all platforms.

In order to disable some unwanted services you should either go to

Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Services or

Start/Run/services.msc.

Once you are at Services, you should identify a useless service and then right click on it and select properties, as displayed below.

For the second part of disabling a particular service, change the Startup Type to Disabled and then click the stop button for full effect to take place as you can see below.

Lastly, you could utilize the command script to disable the service instead of using the control panel if you please. For example, in this service the command would be Apple Mobile Device. Thus the command would be as follows,

sc config applemobiledevice start= disabled

This concludes the tutorial on svchost.exe and I hope this has helped you with the puzzling svchost.exe file. I have explained what it is, why there are so many of these running and what you can do about it. If there are any unanswered queries about the confusing svchost.exe, please feel free to comment below.