[Klaustrophobia]

want to skim the hurricane.  so badly.  but the winds won't allow it.  i either need to go to bed now and try this afternoon or hope for tomorrow.

[Colonol Dekker]

IS that like Twister where they stand in its path?

[deathfun]

Bought them because she thought they were nice and pink #facepalm

How dare you facepalm to the pink

[Aardwolf]

Hey Internets,

I've got a bunch of stupid processes always running that I want to go away (or be told a good reason why they shouldn't go away).

1. unsecapp.exe, running at login
2. WmiPrvSE (possibly minus one of those letters), running at login, and every time I start Firefox
3. TrustedInstaller, running without asking for permission
4. taskhost and taskeng, running for idk-why
5. dllhost (and rarely rundll), running for idk-why

What do?



Posting here instead of its own thread because... idk, I don't feel like making a thread just for this.

[headdie]

first point of call is to google the process name, for example

unsecapp.exe - http://searchtasks.answersthatwork.com/tasklist.php?File=Unsecapp

Sink to receive asynchronous callbacks for WMI client application running in different processes. WMI, Windows Management Instrumentation, enables software developers to write scripts and programs for the management or querying of devices, user accounts, Windows services, running programs, networking, and many other internal technical aspects of Windows - in other words the sort of work TUT does (for example : TUT, The Ultimate Troubleshooter, uses WMI to retrieve all the information that it shows on the System Info tab).

This particular task, UNSECAPP.EXE, is started by Windows Vista when a program needs to use WMI programming - it provides programs with a conduit (sink) to receive from Windows the results of their WMI queries and commands.

------

Leave alone - if this program is running it is because Windows Vista started it automatically in order to support a program that is using WMI.

[Scourge of Ages]

3. TrustedInstaller, running without asking for permission

For some reason I really don't trust this one...

[The E]

Hey Internets,

I've got a bunch of stupid processes always running that I want to go away (or be told a good reason why they shouldn't go away).

1. unsecapp.exe, running at login
2. WmiPrvSE (possibly minus one of those letters), running at login, and every time I start Firefox
3. TrustedInstaller, running without asking for permission
4. taskhost and taskeng, running for idk-why
5. dllhost (and rarely rundll), running for idk-why

What do?

Leave them alone. All of them are OS-level tasks that do important things. TrustedInstaller in particular is the service responsible for managing and installing Windows updates.

[Mongoose]

Really, unless a process I don't recognize is hogging a ****-load of memory, or else is named LOLIMAVIRUS.EXE, I figure it's best to leave all those thingies alone.

[Aardwolf]

Let me rephrase that. I know they are all legit MS programs; I want to know why they are running. I want to know what program, service, scheduled task, etc., is creating these processes.

unsecapp in particular is new and runs at startup, despite the fact that I haven't installed anything new that should run at startup. I want to know why it's running.

WMIblah runs every time I start Firefox. I'm going to look this one up right now Well I found a thread about it, but I'm on Win7 and this talks about it being XP/Vista only

I know TrustedInstaller installs updates, but I'm pretty sure I told Windows to ask before installing.



Hm... so, general question, all of these "-host" programs, is that just referring to localhost, or are they actually talking to a remote machine?

[LHN91]

taskhost and dllhost do essentially what the name says - taskhost hosts dll based services and dllhost hosts dll based applications. These are generic processes that could be used by more-or-less anything.

taskeng is the Windows Task Scheduler's process

UNSECAPP.exe and WmiPrvSE are part of WMI. This could be essentially any program bringing these up as the Windows Management Instrumentation is heavily used by pretty much every program that needs even a cursory look at specs/stats regarding the system it's running on.

Again, all are necessary Windows core functions. Beyond maybe setting UNSECAPP to not load automatically, the rest should be left alone.

[Kopachris]

The -host programs refer to hosting various system-related processes which aren't complete enough to run themselves.  dllhost, taskhost, and svchost all run .dll files in various capacities.  unsecapp.exe is, according to google, "a process found on Microsoft Windows server and workstation suites which offers support towards compatibility issues."  WmiPrvSE is used by various other programs for monitoring and notification.

Basically, don't disable any of these.

EDIT: LHN91's description is better, but yeah, still don't disable any of these.

[Aardwolf]

@Kopachris:  I asked if it was local or remote, I already knew that other stuff.



@all: you are still answering "is it safe to disable/delete <blah.exe>?" when the question I asked was more of a "what's creating these processes?"

RE: unsecapp.exe in particular: It's been appearing after login (usually within a couple of seconds) for maybe the past few weeks, and was never there in the 4 years I've owned this PC before then.

[The E]

Why do you care? Are any of them eating up an unreasonable amount of ressources?

[Luis Dias]

I'm guessing he's become a bit paranoid about all this **** running in the background. After some crazy eddies I've seen in my pcs, I can understand this irritation.

[Kopachris]

@Kopachris:  I asked if it was local or remote, I already knew that other stuff.

It's local, but the "host" part of the name has nothing to do with the term "localhost".

[LHN91]

@Kopachris:  I asked if it was local or remote, I already knew that other stuff.



@all: you are still answering "is it safe to disable/delete <blah.exe>?" when the question I asked was more of a "what's creating these processes?"

RE: unsecapp.exe in particular: It's been appearing after login (usually within a couple of seconds) for maybe the past few weeks, and was never there in the 4 years I've owned this PC before then.

The problem is that almost all of them have nigh-infinite numbers of things causing them to load. Essentially, without knowing every single application, dll, and service and every revision of every application, dl, or service there is no feasible way to know what specific thing causes these particular instances to load.

The reason we're answering with whether it's safe to delete is because ultimately it doesn't matter at all what is causing them to load - they're core processes used by a plurality of things in the system.

[General Battuta]

Really, unless a process I don't recognize is hogging a ****-load of memory, or else is named LOLIMAVIRUS.EXE, I figure it's best to leave all those thingies alone.

Whoa, that's the process that handles my bank info!

[An4ximandros]

Wasn't it related to compatibility fixes? Try googleing it.

[Nuke]

id say nuke it from orbit and see what happens. if it breaks something, un nuke it. these days im too lazy for that kind of science.

Bought them because she thought they were nice and pink #facepalm

How dare you facepalm to the pink

get her one of those hello kitty ak47s.

[Mongoose]

The problem is that almost all of them have nigh-infinite numbers of things causing them to load. Essentially, without knowing every single application, dll, and service and every revision of every application, dl, or service there is no feasible way to know what specific thing causes these particular instances to load.

Isn't there some sort of back-end system logging that would keep a record saying, "Okay, process X made a call for process Y to load at 9:03 AM"?  Not that I'd ever want to bother with looking it up, but I'd figure that there's some way to keep track of what's actually requesting what.