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September 23, 2005
Dear CNET members,
It's been a while since I've asked what you think of the Community Help & How-to newsletter, so it's time to ask again. Do you love it, or hate it? What would you like to see more of or less of? Is the format working for you? I'm always trying to improve the newsletter, and through your feedback, I can better get a sense of what's on your mind. This is, after all, your newsletter, and the content is from your fellow community members, so e-mail me your thoughts. Now let's move on and tackle Chuck's svchost.exe question.
Well, Chuck, without getting too technical, I have found Mark's winning answer to be a great start in answering your question about svshost.exe. But, as always, don't stop there; we also have many more in-depth and technical explanations of what this service does in the honorable mentions and other advice from our members. For example, I've learned that when you allow this service to pass through your firewall, be very careful of how the name of this service is spelled, because many viruses have very similar spellings (example of viruses: svshost or svchosts), hoping to trick you into thinking they are legitimate programs. When in doubt, double-check. If any of you have had bad experiences with svchost.exe or would like to add more information on this program, please join us in this week's discussion and give us all the details. We are here to learn from one another, so your experience and knowledge are appreciated.
(This weekend I will be at the CompUSA in Braintree, Massachusetts, for the final stop of the CNET Trade Up to the Future tour. So if any of you are in the area, please stop by; it would be my pleasure to meet some of our CNET community members face to face, so I hope to see you there.)
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Member Question of the Week
I wish to know what the program svchost.exe wants to do if I
give it permission to access the Internet. My firewall tells
me that svchost.exe wants to access the Internet. This is not
related to my specific request for anything, and my
inclination is to say no. But I am not certain that is the
right thing to do. I have searched the Internet for svchost
and svchost.exe and gotten lots of hits. The Microsoft knowledge
base explains svchost but doesn't convince me I want to let
it access to the Internet. But it also suggests I might
be wrong (note: W32Time, Dnscache…). I could tell the firewall
to never let svchost.exe have Internet access, or I could tell
it to always let svchost.exe have Internet access. But I
don't understand enough to know which would be best. Please
help me out with this sticky security issue.
Submitted by:
Chuck M.
The Microsoft page describing this process is at Microsoft and I've wondered this myself in the past. The svchost.exe runs as a request by DLL's (Direct Link Libraries). This can be a legitimate request from your computer's system processes or any other DLL. More often than not, it is always a Microsoft process request, but it can be used by other programs. Most of these requests...
Submitted by:
Mark P.
For
Mark's
efforts, we're sending him his choice of any
Help.com Learning CD.
Community Buzz
 Each week we take a look at topics discussed in the forums.
Best regards and enjoy!
and Norton coexist?
As Microsoft AntiSpyware Beta increases in popularity, many people have preexisting security utilities such as Norton Internet Security. So the question is, can these one or more of these apps coexist peacefully on the same computer? Or will they conflict? Find out in this discussion what members are saying.
More from the Viruses & security alerts forum
Firefox: price to pay for popularity?
As more and more users shift to the popular Mozilla Firefox browser, it's attracting new users and hackers. Does this mean that Firefox will become more vulnerable to attack than Microsoft Internet Explorer?
Read the article and tell us what your thoughts on this are. We'd like to know, so chime in.
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Can you use a color laser printer
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Color laser printers over the past few years have finally come down to a consumer level of affordability. Laser printers are faster and much more efficient. But how do they compare to inkjet printers when it comes to photo printing? Better or worse? Find out more in this discussion, and
if you have a color laser printer, tell us how you like it.
More from the Peripherals forum
Unreadable sectors on hard drive;
any chance of data recovery?
Member rossdonnan ran into some serious bad luck when his hard drive failed. He would like to know if there is any possibility of recovering the data on his failed drive. Members have chimed in with their recommendations. Do you have any additional suggestions for others in case they find themselves in this predicament?
More from the Storage forum
Stay informed and get help in
our Virus & security forum
While technology advances at a rapid pace, you can bet that computer parasites such as spyware, viruses, and hijackers are keeping up and becoming savvier. So what do you do? Visit the Virus & Security forum, where our incredibly knowledgeable veteran moderators Marianna, Donna, and Roddy proactively help and post updates on all sort of security issues to inform and help our members fight the nightmares of cyberspace.
Mac nugget: CD-ROM icon doesn't
show on G4 desktop
Member oblio211 writes, "My CD-ROM Icon doesn't show up when I insert a CD into my G4. I see the CD player in the System Profiler, but I don't know why it does nothing when I insert CDs. I even tried opening up the case and trying a new drive, but that did not work. Any ideas?"
More from the Mac hardware forum
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Check out next week's question:
I have a question about upgrading to USB 2.0. I have a Dell Dimension 8200. When using a USB device, my computer tells me that things would go faster if I used my 2.0 connection instead of the 1.1. Could you please tell me how to upgrade to 2.0? Is it something I could do by adding or changing something (like a card perhaps)? I would rather buy whatever I need somewhere else than go to Dell, but I don't know what I should purchase. I have added memory and am not afraid to open up the machine and add or change things, but I'm lost about what to do. I would like to upgrade the front and back ports on my machine. Can you help? Any information and details would be great. Thanks.
--Submitted by:
Dennis P.
If you have the answer,
e-mail us at messageboards@cnet.com.
If we choose your response, you'll get a
free Help.com CD.
Have a question?
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| Member Profile of the Week |
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User name: urr_quasdim
Location: Thousand Oaks, California
Member since: March 30, 2005
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About me: Ph.D. in Physics of Fluids, specializing in turbulence modeling (where the gory detail is king...) I love electronic gadgets and own quite a few...(read more)
Each week we feature a CNET member who contributes to our community. Fill out your profile to get a chance to be featured in our newsletter and win a CNET t-shirt!
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Simple question, simple answer
Help your fellow members
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