We are talking about an illustrious protagonist of every Windows system, the Svchost.exe process (so called in Windows 7 and XP) or Host Service (as it is called in Windows 10 and 8), which can be seen present numerous times when you open the task manager. Svchost.exe, defined by Microsoft as a generic host process for services running dynamic-link libraries (DLL), is a file that starts with Windows, is located in the C \ Windows \ System32 folder and loads several Windows services simultaneously .
For debugging purposes, that is, to provide the user with more possibilities to resolve any errors, the svchost.exe file is started in several simultaneous sessions and, each of them, loads a group of services.
For example, one Network Service Service Host process manages network services, another Local System Service Host process could perform all UI-related services, and so on.
If every single service had run under a single host process, a problem on one of the services was enough to crash the computer.
In this way, however, thanks to the separation into groups, if on a particular service it had errors, Windows should still remain functional.
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Basically Host Service is the process that starts and manages Windows services .
The svchost process, which should not interest the user because it does its job in silence and without being noticed, has been, in the past, very studied because it is responsible for system crashes and excessive CPU use.
In the days of Windows XP, when PCs had much more limited resources and the operating system still not optimized, on technology blogs it was recommended to stop all unnecessary services, in order to make the computer faster.
On modern PCs with Windows 10, the Host Service process is much more stable and the impact of services on system performance is very low.
Even today, however, it is possible that the PC will crash and slow down until it stops because one of the Host Service or svchost.exe processes is occupying 99% of the CPU and no longer moves anything on the computer.
Almost always the cause of this problem is the presence of a virus or malware that exploit the svchost.exe file to hide in the middle of the group of processes with the identical name.
Often these viruses open doors on the internet to which the computer is connected, causing major problems.
We still remember today how a notorious and fearsome virus like the Worm Blaster of many years ago was able to send a 100% svchost.exe session forcing the computer to shut itself down.
In other cases there may be a problem with a system driver or with a hardware resource connected to the PC.
That said, if you notice that a particular instance of the Host service is causing excessive CPU usage or too much RAM usage, you can check what specific services are involved and get an idea of how to fix it.
Note that it is not possible to end a random svchost.exe process from task manager without causing a Windows error that crashes the system.
The best way to do the analysis of Svchost.exe and see exactly which services are hosted by a particular instance of Host Service you can use the task manager or, even better, the Process Explorer program (one of the most popular alternatives to the task manager ).
In Windows 10 and Windows 8, you can use the task manager or task manager to analyze various Host Service processes.
Then right-click on the desktop taskbar, open Task Manager, press on More details .
In the processes tab, scroll down and find the various Host Service services and expand them one by one to see the various groupings of services.
By right-clicking on one of the services, you can stop it or open the service management screen to find more information and then, if you wish, decide not to start it automatically again.
The Windows 7 task manager is not as clear and to find the services related to a particular instance of svchost.exe you need to right-click on it and then choose the " go to service " option.
Process Explorer, especially recommended for Windows 7, is a Microsoft program to manage Windows processes that provides all the information about svchost processes and allows you to know which services each process refers to.
Through Process Explorer you can understand what each session of svchost.exe is and then see, if there was one gone to 99% of cpu, which is responsible for the lock of the computer.
Once you have recognized which service is causing problems, you can disable it by going to Control Panel -> administration tools -> services .
Process Explorer is a program that shows the details of all active processes but for a specific analysis on the svchost processes that are active and those that start with the computer, two other specific Windows tools can be used.
To check specifically which svchost processes start when you turn on your computer, you can use another, quite old, program called svchost process analyzer .
Last notation: to know if a virus is hidden behind one of the Host Service processes, you can right-click on the name of the process and then choose the " Open file path " option.
If you open the Windows \ System32 folder, it is almost certainly not malware.
Furthermore svchost.exe has no need to access the network so if the firewall reports abnormal activities and requests to exit the internet by this file, it could be malware.
READ ALSO: Close unnecessary active Windows processes and eliminate wasted memory on your computer
