dude-wait-what Many of us have wondered exactly what svchost.exe is, and why there are a dozen or more  instances of it running in task manager. Microsoft says:

“svchost.exe is a generic host process name for services that run from dynamic-link libraries”

In non-techie jargon, this means that Microsoft went from running required “Services”, or behind-the-scenes utilities in DLL files, rather than executable files, which is a rather good idea, but since you can’t start a DLL file on it’s own, svchost.exe was invented to “host” the needed DLLs. The reason you see so many instances of svchost is that the DLL’s have been separated out to reduce the risk of operating system failure if one of the DLL’s encounters an error, it has a limited number of other services to take down with it.

Wouldn’t it be nice to know exactly what all those svchost applications are actually “hosting”?

Task Manager

Telling us that it’s a “network service” or a “local service” is technically accurate, I’m sure, but is in application, essentially useless information.

Then we found an Open-Source community project over at Microsoft’s CodePlex called svchost Viewer.

Coded in C#, for those of you that wonder about such things, svchost Viewer is a stand-alone executable that requires NO installation. Just download and run the tiny app to discover what your computer is doing.

svchost Viewer

The viewer starts right up under Windows XP, Vista, as well as the Win7 beta release, takes a few moments to examine your system, then you’re suddenly a little less clueless in regards to what’s going on under the hood. Clicking each instance of svchost gives you a rundown of what’s going on inside it, including how much memory it’s using, and how much disk activity it has engaged in.

Expanding the list, you can click on each service individually for detailed info including file path and a brief description pulled from Windows. The descriptions are not always useful, but remember, these were written by Microsoft coders, and if they were brilliant writers, they’d be writing, not coding, no?

There are also tick boxes informing you of whether the service can be manually paused or stopped. You can’t do it from this viewer, but there is a tutorial on starting and stopping Vista services here. One for XP here. Unless you have a recent disk image, you’re hacking around on a non-critical machine or you really know what you’re doing, I don’t recommend messing with services before some serious reading or help from an experienced colleague. Many services are critical to Windows’ stability, and stopping the wrong one can cause you some trouble.

There are so many programs out there bloated and full of crap we don’t need, it’s nice to see things like svchost Viewer that does one thing, does it quickly, does it well, and that’s it.

svchost home here.

Direct download link.

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