SVCHOST.EXE in task manager?

Dustin S. from Texas asks:

" I purchased Windows XP home edition some time back, and have always had a question about some of the programs that it executes. The program that I am speaking of is scvhost.exe. I have tried to stop it from running but this just has the nice reaction of crashing my system. Any help would be appreciated! "

My Response:

The Pac's Portal web site says that there is a legit version of svchost.exe, which runs on Windows 2000 and XP; however, there is also a malicious program called svchost.exe floating around the 'net.

The nasty version of the program is also known as the System1060 homepage hi-jacker, and if present on your machine, would reside in the Windows\System\1060 directory.

The legit copy of svchost.exe is related to dynamic link libraries which are used by Windows (DLLs). As quoted from the Microsoft web site:

" Svchost.exe is a generic host process name for services that are run from dynamic-link libraries (DLLs). The Svchost.exe file is located in the %SystemRoot%\System32 folder. At startup, Svchost.exe 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. This allows for better control and debugging. "