Svchost process list, Get rid of anything ?

[Dave_07]

Hey all,

Just read that svchost explained article over at i am not a geek, followed it's instructions and created a tasklist of everything running under my schost's.
Is there anything i can get rid of, would like as few items running as possible. oh that "Messenger" iteam running under the second svchost, isn't MSN Messenger is it? if it is then, PLEASE tell me how to turn it off/kill it

here it is:

Image Name____________PID Services
System Idle Process........0 N/A
System.........................4 N/A
smss.exe.......................692 N/A
csrss.exe......................740 N/A
winlogon.exe.................764 N/A
services.exe..................808 Eventlog, PlugPlay
lsass.exe......................820 PolicyAgent, ProtectedStorage, SamSs
ati2evxx.exe.................968 Ati HotKey Poller
svchost.exe.................1004 RpcSs
svchost.exe.................1056 AudioSrv, BITS, Browser, CryptSvc, Dhcp,
EventSystem, FastUserSwitchingCompatibility,
helpsvc, lanmanserver, lanmanworkstation,
Messenger, Netman, Nla, RasMan, Schedule,
seclogon, SENS, ShellHWDetection, srservice,
TapiSrv, TermService, Themes, TrkWks,
uploadmgr, W32Time, winmgmt, wuauserv, WZCSVC

svchost.exe................1164 Dnscache
svchost.exe................1188 LmHosts, SSDPSRV, WebClient
spoolsv.exe................1392 Spooler
ati2evxx.exe...............1652 N/A
explorer.exe................1704 N/A
CTHELPER.EXE............1788 N/A
avgcc32.exe...............1820 N/A
zlclient.exe..................1828 N/A
a2guard.exe.................1844 N/A
avgserv.exe.................160 AvgServ
svchost.exe..................260 stisvc
vsmon.exe....................320 vsmon
Maxthon.exe.................1772 N/A
cmd.exe.......................292 N/A
tasklist.exe..................456 N/A
wmiprvse.exe...............1696 N/A

Cheers, Dave.

[Steve]

"Messenger" can be found in the Services control panel, you can disable it from there.

[yamangman]

You don't need wmiprvse, ati2evxx (ATI hotkey poller i think, unless your using hotkeys), spoolsrv unless you have a printer, cthelper (Creative software I think). Couple of others i'm not sure, unless they are programs that you want to use, zonelabs zlclient for example (or it is MSN gaming zone zlclient, i doubt it because you also have vsmon). You can disable them in either msconfig.exe or services.msc.

[Dave_07]

How can if find out what each item is ? & what each item does..

[yamangman]

Google the name of each item. You'll soon come up with more or less the function of every process name of any program . Well, perhaps not any program, but most of the Windows ones and particularly non-essential ones. Also Start>Run services.msc. There it will describe the action of every 'Service' be it Windows or otherwise. You can also set it to 'manual' startup or 'automatic'. Just right click and you'll get the context menu. You can also disable processes entirely. Google for services.msc and you will doubtless come up with a site telling you which settings you can assign to each Windows 'service'. Good luck!