Svchost.exe Virus & Svchost Information Guide!
On occasion you may notice that your computer is running terribly slow. Curious to discover the problem you open up the task manager, and find something similar to the following:
There may just be one svchost, or several – but combined they are bogging down your computer.
Some people report a single instance of svchost which takes up 99% of their computer’s resources – meaning a dead stop for everything else. What’s worse is that when there are multiple instances of svchost they are often competing for the same memory space, meaning none of them get to finish what they are trying to do, and neither do you! Before you take the steps to repair svchost, it’s a good idea to understand how this program works and what it does.
Svchost.exe Virus Removal Guide
What is Svchost.exe Exactly?
Svchost is a shell program that is used to run many different services on your pc. These services are contained in .dll (dynamic link library) files, and run separately from other programs you may be using on your PC.
The svchost file is required to run these files as there is no executable. The .dlls called by the svchost executable could be for automatic updates or other legitimate programs, or they can be used to mask less benign programs.
Since there are many different services required by your computer there could be several instances of svchost.exe running on your computer, and they could all be taking up different amounts of your computer’s memory. A problem tends to arise when one .dll can’t complete its task, which in turn bogs down the rest of the svchost programs. Unfortunately, the svchost.exe is used as a favourite access point for viruses and other malicious programs, especially with Windows XP which has had serious issues with svchost in the past, although most of these issues have now been patched.
However, if you see instances of svchost it is a good idea to run a virus scan, just to be sure that nothing has crept in. Usually you will have a good indication that the svchost.exe is masking a virus or some other major problem when it is using 50% or more of your computer’s resources. The svchost can also become corrupted and cause problems when you install and remove programs, which shifts around the .dll files. So what do you do to fix svchost? While it’s a good idea to download a good registry scanner, you may want to do some more investigating to find the root cause of the problem before you begin.