what is an Generic Host Process for Win32 Services and svchost.exe?

what is an Generic Host Process for Win32 Services and svchost.exe?

Generic Host Process for Win32 Services or svchost.exe is a legal and essential component of Windows which is used to host services which run from dynamic-link libraries (DLLs). Multiple instances of Svchost.exe can run at the same time. So it is not a problem in most cases if you see five or six or even more copies of svchost.exe running in your services because they host different groups of DLLs. However, there are several known spyware anв trojans that pretend to be legal svchost.exe. They usually have the same name or one of the following names: svchost.exe, svchosts.exe (which often causes svchosts.exe page faults), Generic.exe, svcchost.exe and several others. Please note that legal svchost.exe should reside in Windows\System32 folder and should not appear in startup list.
Why do you see "Generic Host Process for Win32 Services has encountered a problem" or similar error messages?

The are several possible reasons of this error message.

Reason 1: You have one of numerous worms, viruses and trojans which pretent themselves to be legal svchost.exe or use legal svchost.exe to run themselves at windows startup. These threats include: CashToolbar Downloader-MY, System1060, CoolWebSearch Svchost32, ADCLICK-AG, ADCLICK-AX, ADUYO-A, AGENT-V, AGOBOT-KL, AUTOTROJ-C and many others.

Reason 2: Some legal DLL which uses svchost.exe to run itself at Windows startup crashed and causes crash of the whole svchost.exe service.

Reason 3: You have just installed update from Microsoft which contains errorneous verison of Windows Installer or double-byte character set (DBCS) characters support (only occures in Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2)).

Reason 4: You installed old printer or scanner drivers from Hewlett-Packard which are incompatible with the current version of svchost.exe