What is the svchost used for.

hello i was wondering what svchost.exe in windows is used for. i downloaded a program and every sense then my zone alarm goes off asking if generic host process for win 32 services can access the internet it did not ask that before. i read on svchost and it something in windows but zone alarm said it was changed. is this sometrhing i should be concerned about?

thanks

the svchost.exe start services used in the Windows OS. For example. One of them is the time service that keeps your machine in sync with Bill Gates Palm pilot. (seriously it is a time server though) These are usually ok to allow access to the net.

Some of them can be turned off. You can disable the time service (Windows-time) you can also disable the Alerter Service and the Messinger Service (not the instant message program). This will also eliminate some instances of this executable.

Straight from Microsoft......Svchost.exe is a generic host process name for services that are run from

dynamic-link libraries that 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.

Examples: AppMgmt, Browser, Dhcp, dmserver, Dnscache, Eventlog, lanmanserver, LanmanWorkstation, LmHosts, Messenger, Plu
g&Play, ProtectedStorage, seclogon, TrkWks, W32Time, Wmi,Spooler, RemoteRegistry, SNMP, Netlogon, Device Manager & etc.

etc.

During your internet surf. Svchost is necessary to have a correct connection. If you block it, you will have problems with the dns-names resolution.
I advice you to only block the trafic with microsoft.com (even if the timer service is disabled).

thank you all for helping me calm my nerves! i get freaked out somethimes.

we al do sometiimes.

Just in case you didn't know this, but if the dates are flashing like they are in this thread, then its not really neccessary to reply to them. This post is over a year old. Tyr to post only to current issues.