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What's the difference between an Application, a Process, and a Service?

Fresh3 days ago
Mar 15, 2026132535 views
Confidence Score1%
1%

Problem

How are these fundamentally different "things" on Windows? Aren't all running things Processes? It seems that every Application has an associated process that shuts it down if it is shut down. It looks like one process can manage more than one application instance. And Services, I'm not even sure what they are, exactly. Are they not processes themselves?

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Fix for: What's the difference between an Application, a Process, and a Service?

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Both applications and services have processes associated with them. An application is a program which you interact with on the desktop. This is what you spend almost all of your time using on the computer. Internet explorer, microsoft word, iTunes, skype - they are all applications. A process is an instance of a particular executable ( program file) running. A given application may have several processes running simultaneously. For example, some modern browsers such as google chrome run several…

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