Windows 7: Why so many svchost processes??

I would really like to know why my process list has 13 instances of svchost running. Doesn't make a lot of sense. Can someone explain why this happens? What svchost is? Thanks.

windows has a lot of background processes constantly running; they are called services and they perform various tasks, such as looking after your network, running windows update, diagnostics, drivers for your hardware, power policies and a load of other stuff.

windows uses the svchost program to host (run) these services, so many different services are running, using the same program.

this is a very simplified explanation, but i hope you get the idea.

this is perfectly normal behaviour, and nothing to worry about.

each instance of svchost is a generic process that controls a different group of services, drivers, dlls, etc.. It's normal to have several instances running simultaneously but 13 of them would indicate quite a bit of bloat running on your computer (or a standard install of 7 ultimate, which for most users is overkill). You can get a general idea what each instance is related to by right clicking on it and selecting go to service(s) and a detailed report by running the resource monitor

One thing I'm noticing is it takes FOREVER for my network connection to load. Maybe 20 seconds. I haven't timed it exactly. But basically, I see that blue lock for that duration, and when it goes away, I'm able to use my network. Is there any way to fix this? How would I know which svchost I'm looking for in this or is it a different process?

Does it really take 20 whole seconds?

on a cold boot my network takes a good 8-10 seconds to connect, not 20 tho

I haven't counted, but really, it seems like an eternity and it shouldn't. What I've found is that apparently the actual connection does occur, but the Blue Lock I was speaking of doesn't go away for a long amount of time. Yesterday, I was online despite having a Red X. I don't get it.

If you want to get more details on your svchosts.exe processes, and what they are doing, head to Microsoft's site and check out the Sysinternals Suite.

Process Explorer is a tool that will reveal all the processes running on your system.

There are some great tutorials on the site for using the full power of this suite of tools - Download the full package, or just the tools you need...

Should help you understand what's going on in your system better.

HTH