services.exe: good or bad?

[Rob]

I've just spent the last three days de-bugging my
computer due to too much spyware and various other stupid
problems. I think it's stable, now. I HOPE!!! At any
rate, I've set McAfee to clamp down on all Internet
related traffic, in or out. So, on my last reboot (of
several hundred), McAfee immediately notified me that
C:WINNT\system32\services.exe was trying to access the
net. I blocked it because I didn't know what it was. (I
know enough about computers to be willing to try to fix
problems on my own, but I probably really shouldn't.) A
quick search on the net for 'services.exe' gave me mixed
responses. On the one hand, it appears to be something
bad which I should delete. On the other hand, it appears
to be a perfectly normal process that I should leave
alone. It is currently running on my system, variably at
about 0-20%. Do I need to worry about it? And did you
really read this whole rant? Thanks.

 

[Alan Illeman]

I've just spent the last three days de-bugging my
computer due to too much spyware and various other stupid
problems. I think it's stable, now. I HOPE!!! At any
rate, I've set McAfee to clamp down on all Internet
related traffic, in or out. So, on my last reboot (of
several hundred), McAfee immediately notified me that
C:WINNT\system32\services.exe was trying to access the
net. I blocked it because I didn't know what it was. (I
know enough about computers to be willing to try to fix
problems on my own, but I probably really shouldn't.) A
quick search on the net for 'services.exe' gave me mixed
responses. On the one hand, it appears to be something
bad which I should delete. On the other hand, it appears
to be a perfectly normal process that I should leave
alone. It is currently running on my system, variably at
about 0-20%. Do I need to worry about it? And did you
really read this whole rant? Thanks.

You need services.exe for UDP (In/Out) for contact with
your primary and secondary DNS servers. Makes no sense
to allow TCP though.

 

[Tim]

Rob,

You need to let the c:\winnt\system32\services.exe
through. Do a little more search on the web, what
you read was other instances of services.exe running
that cause problems, and if your's is running between
0-20%, then I'd say it's normal. The problems begin when
it starts running 99-100%.

good luck.