Process Information
Process File: mainserv.exe
Process Name: PowerChute Personal Edition
Author: APCC.com
Part Of: PowerChute Systems Management
Description:
mainserv.exe is APC's (American Power Conversion) UPS Service and it is installed as a background task on Windows 98/ME or as a service on Windows 2000/XP/2003 by the APC PowerChute UPS monitoring software.
This task logs statistical data about all your UPS events (power dips, power surges, UPS power ON, UPS on standby, user tests, forced shutdowns, etc...). It also feeds the current status of your UPS to the System Tray icon (APCSYSTRAY, ICONCLNT) so that the icon can correctly display the current status of your UPS.
Ditto with the PowerChute software so that the software can correctly display the current status of your UPS when you open PowerChute.
Finally, if you have configured your UPS to shutdown after X amount of minutes of a power cut, this is the task which will take care of shutting your PC down.
This program is non-essential process to the running of the system, but should not be terminated unless suspected to be causing problems.
Note: General rule
Any malware can be named anything - so you should check where the files of the running processes are located on your disk. If a
non-Microsoft.exe file is located in the C:\Windows or C:\Windows\System32 folder, then there is a high risk for a virus, spyware, trojan or worm infection!
The mainserv.exe file is located in the
C:\Program Files\APC\APC PowerChute Personal Edition folder. In other cases, mainserv.exe maybe is a virus, spyware, trojan or worm!
Recommendation for mainserv.exe:
Should not be disabled, required for essential applications to work properly.
This task/service is essential to the proper functioning of your PowerChute software, so leave it alone if you actively monitor the status of your UPS or you have configured it to shutdown after X minutes of a power cut.
Note, however, that, aside from the auto shutdown facility, your UPS still protects your PC even when you do not have any component of the PowerChute software running.
More importantly, we have come across problems with MAINSERV where it would hog 90%-100% of the CPU with the PC slowing down to a crawl as a result. This has never happened to PCs that we've configured, but whenever we've come across the problem with new clients, we first updated the PowerChute software, and then, if the problem still remained, we updated the PC's motherboard chipset software and made sure that all latest Windows updates were installed, and the problem eventually disappeared. At this stage it would seem, therefore, that whenever MAINSERV exhibits this problem it is more an issue with the Windows environment than with MAINSERV itself – the jury is out! Nevertheless, if you have the problem and find that you just cannot solve it, either uninstall the APC PowerChute software, or disable all APC startups on the Startup tab of Windows services and set the Startup Mode of this service to
Manual (Win2000/XP/2003 only).
Summary account
System Process: No
Application: Yes
Background Process: Yes
Uses Network: No
Uses Internet: No
Related processes
apcsystray.exe
(www.parlandosparlando.com/view.php/id_553/lingua_1/whoisit_1)
iconclnt.exe
(www.parlandosparlando.com/view.php/lingua_1/whoisit_1/id_554)