Excessive svchost.exe processes?

[nipva]

I am currently running Windows 7 but am surprised at the number of svchost.exe processes that are running concurrently when I open the processes tab in Task Manager. There are 15: 5 assigned to System, 7 to local service and 3 to network service.
Are these all needed and, if not, how can I tell which are superfluous. and can be deleted.

[Zombywoof]

Right-click an instance of svchost.exe and choose "Go to services" and it will show you what that instance is doing.

[Mac the Knife]

Download Mark Russinovitch's "Process Explorer" from Microsoft Technet - https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/processexplorer.aspx

Free, safe, from MS itself - it will give you a far better idea of what Windows is doing with it's time than Task Manager.

Svchost is, as it's name suggests, a host process that manages an assortment of guest processes, and it is quite normal to have several instances of svchost running at the same time, each managing a different set of guest processes.

Process Explorer is a great tool for seeing what Windows is up to, and once you get get to know what is normally running, a great tool for spotting and exploring unexpected stuff (which might be malware or time-waste-ware).

Out of the box, Windows runs a great stack of services and processes that your OS auto-starts even it you are unlikely to use them. It is easy to tweak services to start only when they are actually needed.

Have a look at the famous Black Viper's site (lots of info and easy to understand) and you will be able to speed things up considerably by simple and reversible means - www.blackviper.com/ (http://www.pprune.org/www.blackviper.com/)

In spite of his odd moniker, Charles is wise in the ways of Windows and has a lot of good tips and tricks.

Good luck!

Mac

[andytug]

It's normal, as long as none of them are sticking at 100% CPU for too long, which might indicate an issue of some sort.