windows 7 - How much memory should svchost.exe(netsvcs) use normally?

I'm using windows 7 and when I look at the processes' memory usage I see that the process svchost.exe(netsvcs) is taking 1.2 GB of the physical memory. Is this normal?

Note: when I start windows the svchost.exe(netsvcs) just uses as little as 14 KB of memory, but after some minutes it starts to take 1.2 GB of the memory.

Answer

The memory requirements of svchost.exe (and netsvcs) vary. Basically, SvcHost is a "trick" that Microsoft Windows uses to have multiple services show up as a single process. This is because there is some amount of overhead per process, so there may be some speed/performance benefits by doing this.

So, the memory requirements of svchost.exe will depend on what services are part of that particular svchost.exe instance.

So, regarding the question: is it "normal"? It's not incredibly surprising. I wouldn't expect that on a machine that has less memory than that, but it is certainly conceivable for machines that have more memory.

To get a more meaningful answer about why/how the memory is getting used, use TaskList/SVC or Resource Manager (which in Windows 7 you may be able to go to by visiting Task Manager, Performance tab, "R_esource Monitor..." button), and on the CPU tab look for multiple services with a same PID) to figure out which services are part of the SvcHost.exe instance you're interested in (like one taking 1.2GB of memory). Once you see which services are using the memory, if you have further questions, then you can ask a new question about the specific service(s) you want to know about.