If you’ve ever tried to slim down Windows’ memory usage by killing unnecessary processes, you’ve likely encountered the vague, too-scary-to-kill “svchost.exe.” It’s technically a generic name for processes running from those .DLL files scattered all around, but what you really want to know is whether you can give all of them the axe. The How-To Geek blog details following those generic entries to the services they run under, using both Vista’s Task Manager and previously featured freeware Process Explorer. The performance boost from each process ticked off is usually minimal, but move through a few and you end up with a little more memory for the stuff that matters. For help identifying other non-sensical process names, take a look at TaskList.org