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Comment by stinos | Hacker News Reader

You can lookup what processes on windows do as well. You won't get the sources for them usually, but that's what you get for choosing a closed source OS. Similar for disabling them. Since you mention AnyDesk: at least on Windows it also comes as a single portable executable which needs no installation nor extra services i.e. only runs when started manually.

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I'm not sure it's that simple. One of the things in my process list is "Service Host: Server". That's so generic I can't even properly google it. One of the answers I found was "A server is an application which serves functionality to other network participants."

In services.msc you get a description: takes care of file and printer sharing and the likes. Otherwise you look for "what does windows server service do?"

you can also do tasklist /svc in a command prompt to get a list of svchosts.exes, pids and the services they are running.

Yup. I wondered what the PS equivalent was. So, figure out which WMI class one needs:

    Get-CimClass | ?{$_ -match 'service'}

ok, 'Win32_service' it is, could've guessed that :) Then:

    $svc - Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_service

what can we do with this?

    $svc | Get-Member

Lots of options, get some to see if it's what is needed:

    $svc | Select-Object -Property Name, PathName, ServiceType | Format-Table

Ok, looks like we need PathName. Sum up and list svchost processes including full descption like the one in services.msc:

    $svc | ?{$_.PathName -match 'svchost.exe'} | Select-Object -Property Name, PathName, Description | Format-Table

Or even easier, in the process manager. Just right click -> Go to Service.

That just tells you the service name; i.e. 'Server', which doesn't tell a lot in this case. services.msc has a more elaborate description.

> You can lookup what processes on windows do as well.

What does svchost do?

It's a host for other services. Point-and-click way to find out which one: right-click in task manager and 'Go to service'.

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