What Is It?

According to Microsoft: svchost.exe is a generic host process name for services that run from dynamic-link libraries. Could we have that in english please?

Some time ago, Microsoft started moving all of the functionality from internal Windows services into .dll files instead of .exe files. From a programming perspective this makes more sense for reusability but the problem is that you cant launch a .dll file directly from Windows, it has to be loaded up from a running executable (.exe). Thus the svchost.exe process was born.

Why Are There So Many svchost.exe's Running?

If you've ever taken a look at the Services section in control panel you might notice that there are a Lot of services required by Windows. If every single service ran under a single svchost.exe instance, a failure in one might bring down all of Windows so they are separated out.

Those services are organized into logical groups, and then a single svchost.exe instance is created for each group. For instance, one svchost.exe instance runs the 3 services related to the firewall. Another svchost.exe instance might run all the services related to the user interface, and so on.

So What Can I Do About It?

You can trim down unneeded services by disabling or stopping the services that don't absolutely need to be running. Additionally, if you are noticing very heavy CPU usage on a single svchost.exe instance you can restart the services running under that instance.

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What is it?

If you've been around Windows for any amount of time, you've seen the zillions of *.dll (Dynamic Link Library) files in every application folder, which are used to store common pieces of application logic that can be accessed from multiple applications.

Since theres no way to directly launch a DLL file, the rundll32.exe application is simply used to launch functionality stored in shared .dll files. This executable is a valid part of Windows, and normally shouldn't be a threat.

Note: the valid process is normally located at \Windows\System32\rundll32.exe, but sometimes spyware uses the same filename and runs from a different directory in order to disguise itself. If you think you have a problem, you should always run a scan to be sure.

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What is it?

Windows Media Player 11 can share media between different computers on the same network, and can even share media with the Xbox 360 as well. For this to work, theres a network sharing service that shares the library even if Media Player isn't open. Its really a great system if you use it.

Both of these processes are part of the Windows Media Player Sharing system, so if you use those features you should not disable it.

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What is it?

Ctfmon is the Microsoft process that controls Alternative User Input and the Office Language bar. Its how you can control the computer via speech or a pen tablet, or using the onscreen keyboard inputs for asian languages.

If you are using any of the above, you should leave it enabled.
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What is it?

If youve looked in Task Manager and wondered what on earth the jusched.exe process is and if you can turn it off, then you are in luck. This process is the Java Update scheduler, which is a process that wastes memory all the time just to check once a month whether there are new updates to Java.

Theres a scheduled tasks feature built into Windows for this type of thing the java update scheduler is obviously not being used for critical updates since its only scheduled to check once each month. Since I simply cant understand why the process needs to waste my memory, it has to go.

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What youll need to do is open up Control Panel, and then if you are in XP you can click on the Java icon, or in Vista/7 you can click on Additional Options, and then click on Java.

Once you have the Java Control Panel open, select the Update tab, and then uncheck the box for Check for Updates Automatically

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Youll receive a warning message stating that if somebody finds a security hole in Java that it will take up to a month before you are protected from it:

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Does anybody else think that the sentence should read the fastest and most secure Java instead of the way its worded?

After you click the Never Check button above, youll probably receive this error message if you are in Windows Vista, stating that it also hasnt been properly certified to work with Vista in the first place. Just click that it works correctly.

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That does make me wonder I guess well miss the update that fixes the problem with the control panel or will we? What you can do instead is schedule a task to run monthly using the built-in Task scheduler.

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What is it?

Desktop Window Manager (dwm.exe) is the compositing window manager that gives you all those pretty effects in Windows Vista/7: Transparent windows, live taskbar thumbnails (that you can resize now), and even the Flip3D switcher that you can disable and replace with Switcher.

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What happens in Vista/7 is that applications write the picture of their window to a specific place in memory, and then Windows creates one composite view of all the windows on the screen before sending it to your monitor. Because Vista/7 is keeping track of the contents of each window, it can add effects when layering the windows such as the transparency were all used to, as well as the live preview thumbnails.

The benefit to using this approach is that Windows Vista/7 can utilize the hardware acceleration features in your video card to create very smooth animations for minimizing and restoring, and even for the transparent effects.

What about Memory Usage?

If you open up Task Manager, you can see the dwm.exe process in the list, typically taking somewhere between 30-50MB of memory in my testing:

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The size of the DWM process is controlled by the number of windows that you have open, since each window requires a buffer in memory to store the contents of the window. If you have a large number of very large windows open, DWM will use more memory.

The benefits of using a compositing window manager are worth that relatively small amount of memory under most circumstances.

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What is it?

The conhost.exe process fixes a fundamental problem in the way previous versions of Windows handled console windows, which broke drag & drop in Vista.

Its a completely legitimate executableas long as its running from the system32 folder, and is signed by Microsoft. Scanning your computer for viruses is never a bad idea, though.

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What is it?
The Microsoft Client Server Runtime Server subsystem utilizes the process csrss.exe for managing the majority of the graphical instruction sets under the Microsoft Windows operating system. As such Csrss.exe provides the critical functions of the operating system, and its termination can result in the Blue Screen of Death being displayed.

Csrss.exe controls threading and Win32 console window features. Threading is where the application splits itself into multiple simultaneous running tasks. Threads supported by csrss.exe are different from processes in that threads are commonly contained within the process, with various threads sharing resources within the same process. The Win32 console is the plain text window in the Windows API system (programs can use the console without the need for image display).

In mobile devices such as notebooks and laptops, the process csrss.exe is closely dependent on power management schemes implemented by the system as defined under the Control Panel option.

csrss.exe is a system process that is needed for your Windows system to work properly. It should not be removed.

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"hkcmd.exe" is Intel's "extreme" grahics hot key interceptor. If you never use the Intel hotkeys, you can go to Control Panel > Intel Extreme Graphics > Hot Keys and turn them off.

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What is it?

grpconv.exe is a Windows Operating System tool. It is used to convert Windows 3.1 groups to folders when upgrading to Windows 95 or later. This program is important for the stable and secure running of your computer and should not be terminated.
grpconv.exe is a system process that is needed for your Windows system to work properly. It should not be removed. Check Windows now to identify removable processes that are slowing down your computer. grpconv.exe


Is grpconv.exe harmful?
This process is considered safe. It is unlikely to pose any harm to your system.

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What is it?

Have you ever opened up Task Manager and saw the process Taskhost.exe running and wonder what it was? Good news, Taskhost.exe isnt a virus or malware, its actually just a process that runs silently in the background. Now granted, it can look suspicious being that it will at times run multiple instances of itself. Despite this, taskhost.exe is one of the good guys and it was put there by Microsoft as a core part of Windows.

Windows uses taskhost.exe as the host for all DLL based services that are run. The process is very similar to svchost.exe (which we talked about earlier) in that its a generic process used to load other entities. Because of this, taskhost.exe may open multiple instances of itself in order to handle DLLs that may be unrelated to one another.

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