Tuesday, February 26, 2013

 What is csrss.exe Process in Windows? It a virus? How to Identify Original file?

People ask me mostly about different Windows processes and now trying to answer one by one, lets see csrss.exe process.
What is csrss.exe? The csrss.exe is Client Server Runtime Subsystem process file which must run all the time on Windows OS. Csrss.exe file works for Win32 console windows, manage the majority of the graphical instruction sets including GUI shutdown, creating or deleting threads and some parts of the 16-bit virtual MS-DOS.
In laptops, the csrss.exe process file works dependently with power management schemes defined by the systems under Control Panel option.

 How many csrss.exe files run in Windows OS?

There is just a single csrss.exe file exists on Windows operating system but users may experience that more than one instance of csrss.exe are running under Task Manager as this is the case in Windows Vista which we observed that at least two instances of csrss.exe run at the same time. The number of csrss.exe file instances may differ according to the operating system version but still the Windows OS has just one csrss.exe file (see below where is csrss.exe located).

Can we remove csrss.exe? 

Csrss.exe removal, the csrss.exe process is included by Microsoft and holds critical features and functions for Windows OS. This is not recommended to kill or terminate the genuine csrss.exe process improperly because it will result the Blue Screen of Death.

Is csrss.exe a virus?

The csrss.exe is a very important system file and its not a virus but some times it may get corrupted by virus and some times the virus, trojan and spyware use the same name hat of csrss.exe, just to hide themselves from system users and in return any anti-virus program can be used to scan and eliminate those malicious files.

Where is csrss.exe located?

Orignal csrss.exe location is C:\Windows\System32\ (your drive may be different from C:)

How to identify original csrss.exe system file and handle csrss.exe problems?

Method 1

The original csrss.exe is located at above mentioned path. In case there are more than one instance of csrss.exe running in Task Manger then you check their location by taking their properties
Right click on running csrss.exe process in task manager and select properties or Open file location.
if the file location is different from the above provided address then it means those are not original Windows files and should be killed and removed from its location. You may need administrator privileges to take properties of running process.

Method 2

There is also an alternative way to identify original csrss.exe file, just navigate to Task Manager > Processes and right click on csrss.exe and click End Process
 If this csrss.exe is a virus then it will not show any critical message about the deletion and complete the process otherwise you will find the following message that the deletion of this file is critical for system.
 Share you experience about csrss.exe windows process, leave some comments below.

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