If you've ever taken a peek at the Windows Task Manager, odds are you've found a couple of running processes called svchost.exe. And chances are you have no idea what this process is doing or if it's safe to kill.

First, it's probably not safe to kill it from the Task Manager. But you can figure out what these processes are doing by using a free and portable (no installation required) tool called Svchost Process Analyzer. Basically, each instance of svchost.exe masks a series of Windows system services. Svchost Process Analyzer lets you figure out exactly what those processes are. If you find some running processes that you don't think you need, you can disable those services using the Windows Control Panel to free up some system resources.

You can also use the program to detect whether a worm or trojan is masking itself as a Windows service.

[via gHacks]