How to Free Up Memory from svchost.exe
How often have you seen your RAM being fully utilized inspite of you not using much memory in user applications ? 
And you find multiple instances of a process named ‘svchost.exe’ running which occupy most of the memory. You aren’t unable to kill them , and you also do not know where they originated from.
So what is svchost.exe
Microsoft describes svchost.exe as “ Svchost.exe is a generic host process name for services that run from dynamic-link libraries (DLLs).”
When Microsoft decided to move all functionality for internal windows service to .dll files to .exe files, the services needed a executable file to launch as .dll could not be launched directly. Thus came in svchost.exe
The Svchost.exe file is located in the %SystemRoot%\System32 folder. At startup, Svchost.exe checks the services part of the registry to construct a list of services that it must load. Multiple instances of Svchost.exe can run at the same time. Each Svchost.exe session can contain a grouping of services. Therefore, separate services can run, depending on how and where Svchost.exe is started. This grouping of services allows for better control and easier debugging.
Why are so many process named svchost running on the system ?
There are numerous service provided by the windows which usually run on our system. If these services ran as individual services , it would be tough to manage them and non functionality of all might lead to that of others, so they are separated and categorized into groups.
These services are logically categorized into different groups and then a single svchost.exe instance in created for each group. The number of services running under a group may differ in number, so one group may run 3 services and another group may be running 5 services.
What can you do to free up memory ?
You can decide on which service are not necessary and you can do without and then you can disable or stop those services. Also if a single svchost service is showing a lot of CPU usage, you can restart these services.
First step is to learn which services are running under which svchost.exe instance.
Open Task Manager and see all the svchost.exe instances running on the system. Check the checkbox against ‘Show processes from all users’.
Checking the services under a particular svchost.exe instance
Right click on the svchost process and click on ‘ Go to services option’ .This will open up services tab and the highlighted services show the services running under that instance.
Disabling Services
Type services.msc in run window. Choose the service you want to disable and right click on it. Select properties option.
Change the start up type to disable and then click stop to immediately stop the service.
That should solve the problem of excessive memory usage by svchost.exe
Hi, I am currently pursuing my MBA from MDI, Gurgaon, India. Apart from keeping myself updated with latest in the tech world , I also like to write. I try and write whenever I get some time off during my hectic MBA schedule.Hope you find my writings useful.
