Windows Vista svchost.exe

I am always in the hunt for applications that eat up my system memory and cpu, and as such, I frequent the task manager and start killing applications that are running. Typically these applications include bonjour, itunes, application launchers, etc.

One application I always see is the “svchost.exe”.

What is this application? Svchost.exe is a general host process name that runs dll files. DLL files are binary assemblies which allows the reuse of codes (functions, procedures, etc) to avoid bloating the operating system. The role of svchost.exe is to launch the assembly for use by different applications. While one process of svchost can run assemblies from multiple applications, Microsoft found it best to run separate executables per application that required the assembly. This provides stability among different applications as they become independent of each other which means that one application that breaks doesn’t affect the rest.

In case you want to see the application that the certain svchost.exe is running, follow the steps below:

1. Open Task Manager

2. Click on the processes tab

3. Right click on svchost.exe

4. Click on Go to services

5. The display name and description column should give you enough information to end the process or not

Go ahead and cleanup the processes you don’t need. This should speed up your operating system.