Svchost.exe and CCSVCHST.EXE?

Question

What are these processes? What do they do? Are they necessary for my computer? What would happen if I deleted/"End Process"ed them? I looked it up on Google a couple of months back, and I got the impression that they were essential to the computer's programming. But today my security system found a trojan virus in svchost! The second one sounds familiar, so I added it in. These two systems are always on my list of processes in my Task Manager, no matter what I am doing. svchost.exe is on the list at least six times. Next to one of the times it says "Network Service". What does that mean? I don't have a network connection, and from what I understand, that's different from an internet connection.

My computer confuses me, so please help! And put it in amateur-understandable language, please! Otherwise, I'll just be even more lost.

Other process that dumbfound me are lsass.exe, winlogon.exe, csrss.exe (is that my RSS feed?), smss.exe, spoolsv.exe, LSSrvc.exe, ati2evxx.exe, ctfmon.exe, btdna.exe, wmiprvse.exe, symlcsvc.exe, jushed.exe, SynTPLpr.exe, hpqwmi.exe, mDNSResponder.exe, AluSchedulerSvc.exe

They confuse me because right now I only have the Task Manager, my Firefox browser, and a folder up.

Answer 1

svchost.exe is valid, its some kind of service hosting process.  I can't tell you exactly, what little I understand is that it has something to do with COM objects, which are used by most programs.  Its normal to find more than one copy of svchost.exe running.

I don't know what ccsvchst.exe is. Of your other ones -

winlogon.exe - is what it sounds like, the process that holds the login state.

smss.exe - small messaging service, I think this is for getting e-mail.

spoolsv.exe - the printing service (it 'spools' data to the printer)

ati2evxx.exe - you have an ATI graphics card and this is its service

SynTPLpr.exe - your on a laptop, this is the synaptics trackpad service

The other ones I'm not sure about. I have some guesses -

wmiprvse.exe - Windows media interface priviledge service. Something to do with media player 'allowing' you to play your music.

jushed.exe - Something to do with the task scheduler, or Justin Timberlake in a shed.

ctfmon.exe - Capture The Flag monitor, when your playing multiplayer Quake.

btdna.exe - Does regular DNA tests on British Telecom.

lsass.exe, symlcsvc.exe, hpqwmi.exe, LSSrvc.exe, mDNSResponder.exe, AluSchedulerSvc.exe, csrss.exe, not sure about these.

If you Google their names, you will find a good description of what they are.

Ending them won't do any lasting harm, they usually start again when they are needed anyway. Some of them start when you start windows.  If you end SynTPLpr.exe your trackpad will stop work, if you end spoolsv.exe you won't be able to print (both last until you restart Windows).