Ctfmon is the process that controls Alternative User Input and the Office Language bar.This how you control your computer with speech,or a pen or using the onscreen keyboard inputs for Asian languages.If are using these services you should leave it on.But if you don`t you can still get rid of it and i`ll show you how.There are a number of ways that this can be done.

Disabling in Microsoft Office 2003

You can remove the alternative text input from Microsoft Office by going to the setup and disabling that feature.Go to Add/Remove programs and select the option "Change your installation of Microsoft Office".Also make sure you check the box for "Choose advanced customization of applications" before proceeding.

Then Find "Alternative User Input" in the list of features and change it to "Not available".

Disabling in Windows XP

Open up Control Panel and choose Regional and Language Options.Then Choose the Languages tab and then click on Details in the top section.

Then you want to go to the services tab and make sure "Installed Services" looks similar to this:

You must do this because if you have more than one Installed service then ctfmon might come back.

Disabling in Windows Vista

Open Control Panel, choose Regional and Language Options and then find "Change keyboards or other input methods".

In the Keyboards and Languages tab, you can choose to Change keyboards.

Now you will have to disable any additional services other than your keyboard should look like this:

Remove From Startup

Got to run and type in "msconfig".Then go to the startup tab.Then disable ctfmon.This should not be attempted in the begining because it will return if you don`t follow th instruction above.

You can also run a code>Run then one at a time in run by going to start run:

Regsvr32.exe /u msimtf.dll


Regsvr32.exe /u msctf.dll

Then you should then remove it from the startup.

The final step is to reboot. 

So you probably are wondering what in the world is svchost.exe.You didn`t start it and you can get rid of it so what is it?

What is it? 

Microsoft defines it as a "generic host process name for services that run from dynamic-link libraries".This means that a while back  Microsoft decided to move all the internal services of Windows to .dll files.Svchost.exe is there because you can`t directly launch a .dll file from WIndows,therefore it needs to be run through a .exe.And that is why the svchost.exe process runs today.

Why are There many svchost.exes Running?

If you ever seen the looked in the Processes tab of your task manager you may notice that more than one running.There are many because windows has many services and if all of them ran under one svchost.exe then one error in a service would bring down all of your windows.These services are organized into logical groups.So a svchost.exe process is running  for each group.

What Can I Do About It?

Well you can cut down on unnecessary services by stopping them.If you notice a heavy CPU usage on a single svchost.exe then you can restart the services running under that process.

I f you want to see the processes just press CTRL-ALT-DEL and you will see the processes under the process tab.

If you want to see what kind of services are being run by a particular svchost.exe you can do this using command promt.Within command promt type in "tasklist /SVC".

The problem with using command line is you do not know what these names mean.

Using Task Manager in Vista

You can select a certain svchost.exe process, and then click on "Go to Service" .

This will bring you to the service tab and show you what services are running under that svchost.exe.The processes will be highlighted: