What is jusched.exe And Why Is It Running?

If you've looked in Task Manager and wondered what on earth the jusched.exe process is and if you can turn it off, then you are in luck. This process is the Java Update scheduler, which is a process that wastes memory all the time just to check once a month whether there are new updates to Java.

There's a scheduled tasks feature built into Windows for this type of thing… the java update scheduler is obviously not being used for critical updates since it's only scheduled to check once each month. Since I simply can't understand why the process needs to waste my memory, it has to go.

What you'll need to do is open up Control Panel, and then if you are in XP you can click on the Java icon, or in Vista you can click on Additional Options, and then click on Java.

Once you have the Java Control Panel open, select the Update tab, and then uncheck the box for "Check for Updates Automatically"

You'll receive a warning message stating that if somebody finds a security hole in Java that it will take up to a month before you are protected from it

After you click the Never Check button above, you'll probably receive this error message if you are in Windows Vista, stating that it also hasn't been properly certified to work with Vista in the first place. Just click that it works correctly.

That does make me wonder… I guess we'll miss the update that fixes the problem with the control panel… or will we? What you can do instead is schedule a task to run monthly using the built-in Task scheduler. If you don't care about updates to Java, then disregard the next part.

Schedule Java Update Check (Optional)
Just type in Task Scheduler into the start menu search box to open the task scheduler, and then click on Create Basic Task.

Follow the wizard along to pick a month and date, and then when you get to the "Start a Program" screen, use this as the path, adjusting if you are running a different version of Java. The key thing is that you run the jucheck.exe in your Java directory.

"C:\Program Files\Java\jre1.6.0_01\bin\jucheck.exe"

Now when the scheduled task runs once a month, or whenever you schedule it, you'll get this dialog if there is a new version, or another dialog stating there are no updates to Java.

What is svchost.exe And Why Is It Running?

You are no doubt reading this article because you are wondering why on earth there are nearly a dozen processes running with the name svchost.exe. You can't kill them, and you don't remember starting them… so what are they?

So What Is It?
According to Microsoft: "svchost.exe is a generic host process name for services that run from dynamic-link libraries". Could we have that in english please?

Some time ago, Microsoft started moving all of the functionality from internal Windows services into .dll files instead of .exe files. From a programming perspective this makes more sense for reusability… but the problem is that you can't launch a .dll file directly from Windows, it has to be loaded up from a running executable (.exe). Thus the svchost.exe process was born.

Why Are There So Many svchost.exes Running?

If you've ever taken a look at the Services section in control panel you might notice that there are a Lot of services required by Windows. If every single service ran under a single svchost.exe instance, a failure in one might bring down all of Windows… so they are separated out.

Those services are organized into logical groups, and then a single svchost.exe instance is created for each group. For instance, one svchost.exe instance runs the 3 services related to the firewall. Another svchost.exe instance might run all the services related to the user interface, and so on.

So What Can I Do About It?

You can trim down unneeded services by disabling or stopping the services that don't absolutely need to be running. Additionally, if you are noticing very heavy CPU usage on a single svchost.exe instance you can restart the services running under that instance.

The biggest problem is identifying what services are being run on a particular svchost.exe instance… we'll cover that below.

If you are curious what we're talking about, just open up Task Manager and check the "Show processes from all users" box

Checking From the Command Line (Vista or XP)

If you want to see what services are being hosted by a particular svchost.exe instance, you can use the tasklist command (tasklist /SVC) from the command prompt in order to see the list of services. The problem with using the command line method is that you don't necessarily know what these cryptic names refer to.

Checking in Task Manager in Vista

You can right-click on a particular svchost.exe process, and then choose the "Go to Service" option. This will flip over to the Services tab, where the services running under that svchost.exe process will be selected:

The great thing about doing it this way is that you can see the real name under the Description column, so you can choose to disable the service if you don't want it running.

Using Process Explorer in Vista or XP

You can use the excellent Process Explorer utility from Microsoft/Sysinternals to see what services are running as a part of a svchost.exe process.
Hovering your mouse over one of the processes will show you a popup list of all the services

Or you can double-click on a svchost.exe instance and select the Services tab, where you can choose to stop one of the services if you choose.

Disabling Services

Open up Services from the administrative tools section of Control Panel, or type services.msc into the start menu search or run box.

Find the service in the list that you'd like to disable, and either double-click on it or right-click and choose Properties.

Change the Startup Type to Disabled, and then click the Stop button to immediately stop it.

You could also use the command prompt to disable the service if you choose. In this command "trkwks" is the Service name from the above dialog, but if you go back to the tasklist command at the beginning of this article you'll notice you can find it there as well.

sc config trkwks start= disabled

Hopefully this is helpful ! :-)

Speed Up SATA Hard Drives in Windows Vista

Windows Vista has built-in support for Serial ATA(SATA) hard drives, but it doesn't automatically enable advanced write caching features. You can speed up your computer by enabling this mode in Device Manager.

You can quickly get to Device Manager by just typing device into the start menu search box. (Or from the command line, devmgmt.msc)

Open the Disk drives section of the tree, and right-click on your hard drive, choosing Properties.

Select the Policies tab, and you should see this dialog:

Click the checkbox for Enable advanced performance, and you are done.

Windows Vista SP1 Released to Windows Update

You can now download Windows Vista SP1 via Windows Update. For those of you eager to receive the benefits of Windows Vista SP1, you can now do so. We've seen quite a bit of questions in our comments so we want to communicate as much as possible surrounding Windows Vista SP1 and today's release to Windows Update as we can.

For those of you happy to wait, sit tight because SP1 will start downloading to PCs automatically beginning in mid-April (remember, this happens only if you have your Windows Update configured to automatically download updates and SP1 will automatically download but not automatically install). But if you want to get the benefit of a year's worth of improvements right now, go check Windows Update today (hit the Start Menu, All Programs, and select Windows Update).

If in running Windows Update you do not see Windows Vista SP1 listed, there are a number of good reasons for this (eight, in fact -- see the whole list). Below are a few of the most common reasons why you might not see SP1 on Windows Update:


You have not yet installed all the prerequisite packages you need for Windows Vista SP1. To install them, visit the Windows Update control panel and click on "check for updates."

You have a pre-release version of SP1 and need to uninstall it before installing SP1

You already have it. To determine if you already have SP1 installed, Open the Start Menu, right click on Computer and left click on Properties.

SP1 is released in these 5 languages: English, French, Spanish, German, and Japanese. If you have any other language installed, SP1 will not yet be offered to you. (You might not even know if you have an additional language installed -- check the Regional and Language Options control panel to see which languages you have installed.)

Back in February MS announced that they would be using Windows Update to help make the update as seamless as possible for our users. Windows Update will detect drivers that we know may be problematic when updating to SP1 and will not offer the service pack until an update has been installed.


Those of you who find that SP1 isn't offered over Windows Update even after updating all your drivers, but would still like to download it can access our "standalone installer" from the Microsoft Download Center here. Windows Update will help ensure a better experience, so if you do choose to visit the Microsoft Download Center make sure that you read these KBs before installing.

How to configure AVG Firewall to allow VPN connection?

Various VPN applications use different protocols for their communication.
Therefore, if you find some blocked traffic in the Filter Device log, with protocol: 47 mentioned, please allow the GRE rule.
If protocol: 50 is mentioned there, please allow the ESP rule.
The GRE and ESP rules are already created within the AVG Firewall. You only need to change them to allowed, as follows:
AVG Control Center->AVG Firewall->Configuration->System tab

If you cannot find these two rules within the AVG Firewall, please run the Automatic Configuration Wizard again. It will automatically create them.