1. SPS Accounts:
    Do you find yourself coming back time after time? Do you appreciate the ongoing hard work to keep this community focused and successful in its mission? Please consider supporting us by upgrading to an SPS Account. Besides the warm and fuzzy feeling that comes from supporting a good cause, you'll also get a significant number of ever-expanding perks and benefits on the site and the forums. Click here to find out more.
    Dismiss Notice
Dismiss Notice
You are currently viewing Boards o' Magick as a guest, but you can register an account here. Registration is fast, easy and free. Once registered you will have access to search the forums, create and respond to threads, PM other members, upload screenshots and access many other features unavailable to guests.

BoM cultivates a friendly and welcoming atmosphere. We have been aiming for quality over quantity with our forums from their inception, and believe that this distinction is truly tangible and valued by our members. We'd love to have you join us today!

(If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us. If you've forgotten your username or password, click here.)

All the many svchosts

Discussion in 'Techno-Magic' started by chevalier, Dec 16, 2006.

  1. chevalier

    chevalier Knight of Everfull Chalice ★ SPS Account Holder Veteran

    Joined:
    Dec 14, 2002
    Messages:
    16,815
    Media:
    11
    Likes Received:
    58
    Gender:
    Male
    Remove all ads!
    What's the deal? I have like five and they take a couple megs of memory each, as well as even well over 20MB in one case. They seem to be launched by the system itself or my account and the name of the process is "svchost" at all times. I know that sometimes trojans and the like use svchost.exe, but names are different. In my case, it's "svchost" for name and svchost.exe as the file. What can it be?
     
    chevalier, Dec 16, 2006
    #1
  2. Taluntain

    Taluntain Resident Alpha and Omega Staff Member ★ SPS Account Holder Resourceful Adored Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) New Server Contributor [2012] (for helping Sorcerer's Place lease a new, more powerful server!) Torment: Tides of Numenera SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) BoM XenForo Migration Contributor [2015] (for helping support the migration to new forum software!)

    Joined:
    Jun 11, 2000
    Messages:
    23,645
    Media:
    494
    Likes Received:
    564
    Gender:
    Male
    Just leave them be, we all have them...
     
    Taluntain, Dec 16, 2006
    #2
  3. chevalier

    chevalier Knight of Everfull Chalice ★ SPS Account Holder Veteran

    Joined:
    Dec 14, 2002
    Messages:
    16,815
    Media:
    11
    Likes Received:
    58
    Gender:
    Male
    Right. I've just read up on it, so it looks like the only problem might be unwanted services or a trojan writing something in the file. Doesn't seem to be the case with me. *sigh*
     
    chevalier, Dec 16, 2006
    #3

  4. Wordplay Gems: 29/31
    Latest gem: Glittering Beljuril

    Joined:
    Oct 14, 2002
    Messages:
    3,453
    Likes Received:
    1
    They support the other functions, so the less you have background tasks, the fewer 'svchosts' you have. I got five too.
     
    Wordplay, Dec 16, 2006
    #4
  5. Harbourboy

    Harbourboy Take thy form from off my door! Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!)

    Joined:
    May 29, 2003
    Messages:
    13,354
    Likes Received:
    99
    One word of caution. Make sure none of them are the misspelt "scvhost", because that is a cunningly disguised virus that really will use up all your system resources.
     
    Harbourboy, Dec 17, 2006
    #5

  6. Celesialraven Gems: 11/31
    Latest gem: Bloodstone

    Joined:
    Oct 2, 2004
    Messages:
    402
    Likes Received:
    0
    I have 9 of them with one taking up 111,524kb of memory :eek:
     
    Celesialraven, Dec 17, 2006
    #6
  7. chevalier

    chevalier Knight of Everfull Chalice ★ SPS Account Holder Veteran

    Joined:
    Dec 14, 2002
    Messages:
    16,815
    Media:
    11
    Likes Received:
    58
    Gender:
    Male
    Yeah, or when they start from a different directory than the default one.

    Eeek... it does look wrong.
     
    chevalier, Dec 17, 2006
    #7

  8. Erod Gems: 14/31
    Latest gem: Chrysoberyl

     Veteran

    Joined:
    May 21, 2005
    Messages:
    652
    Likes Received:
    3
    A default WinXP installation should have about 5 different svchost.exe processes. It is used to launch several services, for example the DHCP- and DNS-client. The problem is that some malware could use it and you cannot see what it actually is with only the Task Manager. Go to http://www.sysinternals.com/ (it will redirect to a MS site because MS bought them) and download the Process Explorer tool, with this you can see what is what. The site also has a lot of other tools available, that any system administrator will find useful, but they might require some basic knowledge about how things work.
     
    Erod, Dec 18, 2006
    #8
Sorcerer's Place is a project run entirely by fans and for fans. Maintaining Sorcerer's Place and a stable environment for all our hosted sites requires a substantial amount of our time and funds on a regular basis, so please consider supporting us to keep the site up & running smoothly. Thank you!

Sorcerers.net is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to products on amazon.com, amazon.ca and amazon.co.uk. Amazon and the Amazon logo are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates.