How Many 'svchost.exe'-Processes Do I Need to Let Run?
@mythociate (21432)
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
January 12, 2013 8:32am CST
Having to use my Windows Task Manager 'Processes'-tab to close Firefox sometimes, I see FOUR-OR-FIVE 'svchost.exe'-processes running.
Why does that show up so many times? Wouldn't it be more efficient to have ONE svchost-process handle ALL the ... programs that svchost handles? Should I 'End Process' on all the instances except the one using the most memory?
1 person likes this
4 responses
@owlwings (43910)
• Cambridge, England
12 Jan 13
Svchost.exe is a generic host process name for services that run from dynamic-link libraries (DLLs). You are very likely to have more than one instance of the process running because the DLLs required by various processes are divided into groups for better control and easier debugging and each group is handled by an instance of svchost.
There is a full explanation here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314056
If you 'end process' on any of them, they will simply start again when the process calling the DLLs it requires finds they are not loaded.
1 person likes this
@owlwings (43910)
• Cambridge, England
14 Jan 13
Yes, a similar metaphor could be applied to the Internet, in a sense. I was describing what happens when you run a program on your PC, however. DLLs have nothing to do with the Internet (except those which contain the code to handle Internet protocols, of course).
The perfect metaphor for the Internet!
@topffer (42156)
• France
13 Jan 13
Because it depends of another process, you have to kill this process first in order to be able to kill this service -- it is a bit more complex : there is an optimization during the startup and one svchost.exe can serve several processes ; all of them have to be ended before svchost --. But Windows is not dumb, and once it will realize that this svchost is orphan and useless, it will stop it itself. Then the best you can do with these svchost... is to let them live.
@csabaholcz (843)
• Hungary
12 Jan 13
I don't think so everyone has a few of them. Windows isn't the best in keeping things clean.
