What is svchost.exe And Why Is It Running?

What is svchost.exe And Why Is It Running?




You are no doubt reading this article because you are wondering why on earth there are nearly a dozen processes running with the name svchost.exe. You can’t kill them, and you don’t remember starting them… so what are they?


This article is part of our series explaining various processes found in Task Manager, including: jusched.exe, dwm.exe, ctfmon.exe, wmpnetwk.exe, wmpnscfg.exe,mDNSResponder.exe, conhost.exe, rundll32.exe, Dpupdchk.exe, and Adobe_Updater.exe.


Do you know what those services are? Better start reading!


So What Is It?


According to Microsoft: “svchost.exe is a generic host process name for services that run from dynamic-link libraries”. Could we have that in english please?


Some time ago, Microsoft started moving all of the functionality from internal Windows services into .dll files instead of .exe files. From a programming perspective this makes more sense for reusability… but the problem is that you can’t launch a .dll file directly from Windows, it has to be loaded up from a running executable (.exe). Thus the svchost.exe process was born.


Why Are There So Many svchost.exes Running?


If you’ve ever taken a look at the Services section in control panel you might notice that there are a Lot of services required by Windows. If every single service ran under a single svchost.exe instance, a failure in one might bring down all of Windows… so they are separated out.


Those services are organized into logical groups, and then a single svchost.exe instance is created for each group. For instance, one svchost.exe instance runs the 3 services related to the firewall. Another svchost.exe instance might run all the services related to the user interface, and so on.


So What Can I Do About It?


You can trim down unneeded services by disabling or stopping the services that don’t absolutely need to be running. Additionally, if you are noticing very heavy CPU usage on a single svchost.exe instance you can restart the services running under that instance.


The biggest problem is identifying what services are being run on a particular svchost.exe instance… we’ll cover that below.


If you are curious what we’re talking about, just open up Task Manager and check the “Show processes from all users” box:




Checking From the Command Line (Vista or XP Pro)


If you want to see what services are being hosted by a particular svchost.exe instance, you can use the tasklist command from the command prompt in order to see the list of services.


tasklist /SVC





The problem with using the command line method is that you don’t necessarily know what these cryptic names refer to.


Checking in Task Manager in Vista


You can right-click on a particular svchost.exe process, and then choose the “Go to Service” option.





This will flip over to the Services tab, where the services running under that svchost.exe process will be selected:





The great thing about doing it this way is that you can see the real name under the Description column, so you can choose to disable the service if you don’t want it running.


Using Process Explorer in Vista or XP


You can use the excellent Process Explorer utility from Microsoft/Sysinternals to see what services are running as a part of a svchost.exe process.


Hovering your mouse over one of the processes will show you a popup list of all the services:





Or you can double-click on a svchost.exe instance and select the Services tab, where you can choose to stop one of the services if you choose.





Disabling Services


Open up Services from the administrative tools section of Control Panel, or typeservices.msc into the start menu search or run box.


Find the service in the list that you’d like to disable, and either double-click on it or right-click and choose Properties.





Change the Startup Type to Disabled, and then click the Stop button to immediately stop it.





You could also use the command prompt to disable the service if you choose. In this command “trkwks” is the Service name from the above dialog, but if you go back to the tasklist command at the beginning of this article you’ll notice you can find it there as well.


sc config trkwks start= disabled


Hopefully this helps somebody!


Source: How to Geek

How to Lock Down Your Facebook Account

How to Lock Down Your Facebook Account
Facebook definitely allows you to easily communicate with others, but if you’re not careful, certain information you would like to remain private can be exposed. Here we take a look at locking down your profile, and how to avoid other annoyances.

Privatize Your Profile

Facebook is a great way to keep in touch with friends, family and other contacts online. It’s also a great place to spread personal information, pictures, and other data to everyone if you don’t use the proper settings. The first thing you want to do is change default settings under the Privacy Settings.






Take the time to go through each of the privacy sections and make the appropriate choices for your profile.

Go through each section to adjust who can see your information. Of course showing it to everyone will be the least private.

Make sure to go through the settings for both Basic and Contact information.





If you choose a custom setting you can select who sees it and even block out specific users(like your crazy ex).





Control what information is on your wall, and what posts to your friend’s wall.





Control what other people can see about you in searches.





If there are certain users you don’t want to be able to contact you then you can put them in the block list.





Avoid Quizzes and Other Snooping Apps


You might be enticed to take the multitude of quizzes and games on Facebook because you’re bored or other friends have recommended them. They can however, be aggressive data miners. So when you’re taking a quiz to find out “Who is your Celebrity Twin” the developers of those quizzes are gathering your personal data.





It’s not a secret that your information is being shared through Facebook applications. If you go into the Applications overview under Privacy settings, it states how apps interact with your data. Here are a few of the items in the privacy statement.


“When you authorize an application, it will be able to access any information associated with your account that it requires to work.”


“When a friend of yours visits an application or authorizes it, the information that the application can access includes your friend’s friend list and information about the people on that list.”


“If you interact with an application that has been restricted to users of a certain age and/or country without explicitly authorizing the application, the application might be able to infer your approximate birth date or location because you were able to access the application.”


Under the Privacy section and Application Settings you can control what types of information can be seen through apps. If you don’t want anything shared select that option at the bottom.





With Facebook being a central hub of social activity, you might have co-workers, supervisors, or the head boss as a contact. If you are playing games on company time, make sure you don’t get busted on Facebook. Under the same apps privacy page we were at above, scroll down a bit further and check the box under Beacon Websites. A Beacon Site where you play a game needs to be an affiliate of Facebook, but if you aren’t sure, you might want to check this box to be safe.





Block Facebook Annoyingness


If you’re sick of seeing messages every time a friend takes a quiz or makes a move in Mafia Wars, make sure and check out The Geek’s article on how to Block Those irritating Facebook Quiz & Application Messages.





Conclusion


Facebook can be a lot of fun and is a great place to keep in touch with others, but by default it shares a lot of information that you might want to remain private. These steps should help you out in protecting your privacy, and avoiding potentially embarrassing or awkward situations.




Source: Unknown