Svchost.exe Is it a windows essential programme or a virus

Asked By 40 points N/A Posted on -
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I am running a windows XP on a very slow computer. At times I struggle to keep the least number of applications alive so that they would occupy the least RAM. Of late I have noticed a suspicious file appearing in my tasks of task manager.

It is named as svchost.exe.

Could any one tell me if this is a genuine process or a virus.

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Best Answer by Betty
Answered By 0 points N/A #88512

Svchost.exe Is it a windows essential programme or a virus

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Well, there is really nothing to worry about, because according to Microsoft "Svchost.exe" is a generic host process for the name of services that are running on dynamic- link libraries.

If you see too many svchost ,then one thing you can do is cancel all of them and restart your computer to see if there is multiple of them or not. I hope I have tried solving your problem.

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Best Answer
Answered By 0 points N/A #88514

Svchost.exe Is it a windows essential programme or a virus

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Hi Myron,

Svchost.exe is not a Malware/spyware file. It is an internal part of the Microsoft Operating system. According to Microsoft: “svchost.exe is a generic host process name for services that run from dynamic-link libraries”.

That is, they help in running the windows services. You can have more than one svchost.exe processes running simultaneously on the computer. You can stop the service by temporarily disabling the particular svchost.exe process.

Hope this helps.

Betty

Answered By 590495 points N/A #310336

Svchost.exe Is it a windows essential programme or a virus

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The “svchost.exe” file is not a program or application that you normally install on your computer. This program is a system process that hosts numerous services in Microsoft Windows in the Windows NT series of operating systems. The name “svchost” is the shortened name for “Service Host.”

This system process is vital to the execution of what they call “shared service processes”, where several services can share a single process for the purpose of reducing consumption on resource. Grouping numerous services into a single process saves computing resources and this consideration was of specific concern when they designed Windows NT.

This is because creating Windows services consumes more time and more memory compared to other operating systems like in the UNIX family. But the downside is, if one of the services triggers an unhandled exception, the entire process can possibly crash.

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