Unnamed process in Task Manager

I have a question ... When I enter the Task Manager, I notice that there are unnamed processes running.

After going into details of this process, I notice that it is the legitimate Windows process svchost, but without a name.

But these processes don't stay running all the time... they only do it when I start or restart the computer, and only for a couple of minutes, no more, then they disappear.

In addition, the executable of the process (svchost), is located in: C:\Windows\System32

Could this be considered normal?

Note: I'm running Windows 10 20H2 (Spanish version).

(Screenshot)

Sorry, I can't insert embedded images yet

Thanks in advance

1 Answer

svchost processes are entirely normal. They have been part of Windows for years and are not unique to Windows 10.

Often (not always) there will be a name with the process.

svchost processes

Svchost.exe is a process that hosts other Windows services that perform various system functions. There can be multiple instances of svchost.exe running on your computer, with each instance containing a different service.

[Run] ... task manager. If you just see a small box with a list of currently running programs, make sure to click on More details at the bottom.

Then click on the Processes tab and scroll past Apps and Background Processes until you get to Windows Processes. Keep scrolling down until you start seeing Service Host:. There should be quite a few of them listed.

You can run a command to get a text list of these services.

Tasklist Command

On any version of Windows, you can use the command line to generate a list of all the svchost.exe processes along with the service that is running inside each. To do this, simply open a command prompt by clicking on Start and typing in cmd.

At the command prompt, go ahead and copy/paste the following command:

tasklist /svc | find "svchost.exe" This will generate a list of all running processes, pass that list to the find command and filter to only show the svchost.exe processes. If you want to output this to a text file, use the following command:

tasklist /svc | find "svchost.exe" > c:\tasklist.txt Note that in order to output to the root of the C drive, you’ll need to open an Administrator command prompt (Start, type cmd, right-click on command prompt and choose Run as Administrator).

As noted above, scrolling down past the apps in Task Manager, you can see Service Hosts processes with names. It was not always this way. Windows 10 is a big improvement.

You can use the command line also as noted above: tasklist /svc | find "svchost.exe"

Here is a screen shot of the names shown.

In summary then, svchost is entirely normal and nothing to worry about.