Microsoft Windows (any flavor) is known to be very secretive and dishonest when it comes to telling its user/client/owner what is taking up sooo much system resources, and answer the question “why is my Windows so slow?“.
If you take a closer look at your Windows system you will notice that many CPU cycles and megabytes of RAM belongs to the process with very non-descriptive name “svchost.exe“. You can go to windows task manager by pressing “Ctrl+Alt+Del” and choosing task manager (if it does not come up by itself), or by running “taskmgr” command in your run window “Start -> Run” (more about the second approach in this arcticle “Windows Commands: Think You Know It All !?“). So here is an example of a Windows Task Manager:
(click on “Processes” tab to get to the same view)
This is a snapshot of a “clean” Windows that has just started with NO custom applications running (well besides “mspaint.exe” to get a snapshot, which is ultra small). And already you can see there are 6(!) “svchost.exe” processes that take up RAM and will take up a lot of CPU when you start your Internet Browser, e-mail client, MS Office, Games, etc…
But if you ask what these “svchost.exe” processes responsible for, who started them, and who is their owner, Windows will say: “You are an average Windows user, we exposed everything you need through window managers, if you are unhappy, well.. tough luck”. And that happens to most of people who use Windows, because most people who are technical enough will use something like Linux or if budget allows people would go for Mac.
So here is a simple howto, for all people who are still on Windows, on identifying and disabling owners of “svchost.exe”.
To see the owners follow these two simple steps:
- Go to “Start->Run”
- Type “cmd” and press “Enter”. Black command screen will pop up. (Don’t be afraid of it – it is your friend :) )
- In this back command prompt (what people call it) type “tasklist /svc” and press “Enter”
You should see something similar to the picture below:
Now you can actually see the “services” that are hidden behind this meaningless name “svchost.exe”. Well, that is one step forward, but now what?
Now you can go to Windows Service manager and read about each service that is using “svchost.exe”. Let’s do together:
- Go to “Start->Run”
- Type “services.mcs” and press “Enter”
After you press “Enter”, you should see windows services manager:
Browsing through the services you can read their description and decide whether or not you want the service to run.
There is another quicker way to enable/disable services, but without their descriptions:
- Go to “Start->Run”
- Type “msconfig” and press Enter
After pressing “Enter”, you should see “System Configuration Utility”:
Click on “services” tab to get the above view. As you can see you can “check/uncheck” desired services to change their state from “Running” to “Stopped”. But if you unfamiliar with a particular service, read its description first in “windows services manager”, or google it, if it is not there.
Keep up a “clean” and fast Windows system, and good luck!