Category: Windows
by Dennis Faas, infopackets editor
http://www.infopackets.com
Dustin S. from Texas asks:
" I purchased Windows XP home edition some time back, and have always
had a question about some of the programs that it executes. The program
that I am speaking of is scvhost.exe. I have tried to stop it
from running but this just has the nice reaction of crashing my system.
Any help would be appreciated!
Thank you much,
Dustin S.
San Antonio, Tx "
My Response:
The
Pac's
Portal web site says that there is a legit version of svchost.exe, which
runs on Windows 2000 and XP; however, there is also a malicious program
called svchost.exe floating around the 'net.
The nasty version of the program is also known as the System1060 homepage
hi-jacker, and if present on your machine, would reside in the
Windows\System\1060 directory.
The legit copy of svchost.exe is related to dynamic link libraries which
are used by Windows (DLLs). As quoted from the
Microsoft web site:
" Svchost.exe is a generic host process name for services that are run
from dynamic-link libraries (DLLs). The Svchost.exe file is located in the
%SystemRoot%\System32 folder. At startup, Svchost.exe checks the services
portion of the registry to construct a list of services that it needs to
load. There can be multiple instances of Svchost.exe running at the same
time. Each Svchost.exe session can contain a grouping of services, so that
separate services can be run depending on how and where Svchost.exe is
started. This allows for better control and debugging. "
