Start & stop sevices/What have I done??!!

systemlord

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I was reading PC GAMER today:10 ways to wip XP into shape and I think I went too far? I went to administative tools/shortcut to services and change a few things from manual to automatic, disabled 1 or 2 services and major problems followed. Now I have six svchost.exe in-all when I should only have 4 total, now I have 3 svchost.exe "system services", two svchost"network services", 1 "service.exe" and 1 svchost "local service". Next thing that happens is my Audigy 2ZS sound card starts to ecco and I go into speaker settings & can't even select any speakers, no 2.1, no 5.1, no nothing/blank selection?? Windows XP won't let me set anything other than two cannel. Next blue screen of death/memory dump then it says nv4_disp/Nvidia driver did infanite loop, now everything runs good but now I have too many svchost.exe's running with a page file of 140MB. I tried system restore but that "did" help undo those changes, but those 2 extra svchost.exe still remain in the processes when 2 of them shouldn't be there. In processes it shows 3 of them with no path or applications. How do I remove those extra svchost's WHAT DO I DO?? :oops: :oops: :oops:
 

jbrownos

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Svchost is basically a host process for services that don't run directly as a process themselves (because the service runs from a .dll file). There isn't necessarily a specific number of svchosts that are supposed to run. Basically lots of built-in windows services as well as third party services (including one's for you audio driver and likely any antivirus you have), will run under a copy of svchost.

So if everything is working fine, don't worry about the specific number. You probably just caused some service to launch another svchost instance when you were setting services to load automatically. Other than using a very small amount of resources, it's hardly an issue as long as everything works properly.

BTW, if you or anyone else is curious about exactly what is being hosted, XP Pro has a tool that can list it for you. If you really want to get rid of an svchost instance, it will let you know exactly what services are using each one. The command is as follows:

Go to Start>Run
Type "cmd" (without quotes) to get to the command line
Then type the following:
tasklist /svc /fi "imagename eq svchost.exe"

Also, a good resource for XP services is available in the link below (used to be blackviper.com). The services.msc panel will also display some information on some items when you select them, so use that to your advantage. As you seem to have already learned, it's important to be careful when playing around with services et al. And don't be surprised if you mess something up royally (goodness knows I have plenty of times). Anyway, here's the link:
http://www.dead-eye.net/WinXP%20Services.htm
 

systemlord

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Ok if I do manage to remove the extra 2 svchost, network service, system, will the program just move the other programs over to the other svchost? "When you said that when I disabled 2 of the svchost the OS started up 2 more to replace the 2 I stopped, you nailed it on the head." Now I have to remove the extra 2 without damaging my OS as I have the tool or causing 2 more from starting up again. How do you think I should proceed as far as removing those extra svchosts? There eating my CPU %. :) THANKS FOR HELPING!
 

systemlord

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Ok now I have Process Explorer & have ID'ed those 2 extra svchost. Svchost.exe 1136 has only 1 service running on it - DNS Client and svchost.exe 516 has 1 also HTTP SSL. Is there any reason why thoses network services can't run with all the other web based services on the the other svchost.exe? 1 of the svchost.exe has 26 services on it, most of which are web based like: XP firewall, browser, DHCP Client etc.. Now how do I move 1 service from 1 svchost to another without killing a process tree and causing more crashes, I know leave it aloan but I can't stand the extra CPU% load as little as it is, I need every ounce of raw power! The first time my PC crashed my sound driver was damaged along with my NVidia driver and had to be reinstalled them again. THANKS FOR HELPING AGAIN!
 

jbrownos

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From my understanding, I don't think there would be much benefit to reassigning a service to a specific instance of svchost. The thing is, an instance of svchost should only use the resources needed for the underlying services it hosts. I honestly have no idea if it is possible for an end user to manually control where a service gets hosted, but I suspect it would be a feat better left to software developers.

What you have to understand is that svchost is pretty much just an empty shell for the underlying services. Having an extra svchost running might use an extremely small amount of RAM as overhead, but I know for a fact that it would be less than 1/20th of a megabyte. Any CPU overhead would probably be completely negligible once it was loaded into memory (ie less than .01% usage [likely far less] of most modern CPUs -- provided the hosted services weren't being used).

That being said, if you are seeing CPU or memory usage for one of the svchosts, it's probably an issue with whatever service it's running, not with anything about svchost itself. You would need to try to figure out what service is using the resources and figure out if there is something you can do about it. If the usage is too much, then the service is doing something, which may be because you or some program is doing something that needs it. And it never hurts to check your system for viruses, just to rule that out as well.

Just keep in mind that programs (including games) and the system in general need to interact with services to fulfill some tasks, so some memory and CPU use by svchost instances may be required.
 

systemlord

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Ok I found out what was causing the CPU load, it wasn't svchost but something else, svchost problem fix-ahhh. But since that crash resulting from me messing with the services/start & stop my creative drivers were really messed up, so were my NVidia drivers and now I think my Logitec mouse drivers. NVidia drivers, some menu's were blank & for the sound drivers the same some menu's blank. Reinstalled both of them, now I think my Logitec G7 cordless mouse drivers are messed up to, mouse just freezes up some times. The funny thing is my mouse didn't act up until I installed Process Explorer, I meen the very second I launched it my mouse froze up but not anything else did. "I did mess with UPNP device processes from manual to automatic, maybe.... Whats next??? THANKS AGAIN, AGAIN! Did you hear an ecco, ecco?