What Is svchost.exe and what does it do?

Svchost.exe and services.exe are responsible for launching the processes associated with the behind-the-scenes programs controlled by the Services window (services.msc).

A single instance of svchost.exe may be responsible for a single service or several. You should never interfere with any instances of svchost.exe or services.exe you might see listed in Task Manager. Instead, use the Services window to start or stop a service or choose whether or not a service is started automatically when Windows starts.

If you're using Windows Vista, you can use the TaskList utility (tasklist.exe) to see which services are handled by any given instance of svchost.exe. Just open a Command Prompt window (cmd.exe), and type:
tasklist /svc

Then, match up the numbers in the PID column of TaskList's output with those in the PID column of Task Manager's Processes tab.

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