Filed under: OS Updates, Security, News, Windows, Microsoft
Langa: svchost.exe debunked
by Ryan Carter Oct 8th 2006 at 7:25PM
Have you ever wondered what that "svchost.exe" service was running multiple copies on your Windows PC? In case you do wonder, check this out from Langa's blog. Fred Langa is the guy behind the famous Langa Letters who writes for InfromationWeek. He explains what svchost.exe does and an unusual way to find out which services and processes are running behind all those svchost.exe entries in your task manager. He says that using Windows Defender will give you more detail on what is going on behind the scenes. I a big fan of Langa for this reason, and instead of rewriting my own version of what I would do, instead I'll point you to this excellent resource he has written on the subject.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
RedundantMan said 12:12PM on 10-09-2006
Aw. That's cute. A M$ utility that does what SysInternals Process explorer has done for years.
...wait for it...
Oh yeah, M$ acquired SysInternals recently.
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Joseph Villalobos said 12:12PM on 10-09-2006
Wow, excellent blog entry! I now know what what services to disable to reduce the size of that large svchost.exe process!
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Medlir said 6:22PM on 10-09-2006
To the first poster, as the Langa article says...
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/tasklist.mspx
tasklist.exe, which is a command-line utility that ships with XP by default and always has, has a /svc parameter that has always shown what services run on each svchost process. The only thing SysInternals Process Explorer does extra in this area is take the service names like tasklist outputs, and look up the Display Name for each service in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServices
Seriously, Microsoft doesn't need to acquire SysInternals to be able to such a simple thing... anyone with 15 seconds of time and a little knowledge has been able to do the same for years without any third party tools.
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