CPU hogged by svchost - XP Home

[Lost_luggage34]

Have an intermittent issue with an XP Home PC which I have been unable to pin down so far.

Every now and again the PC slows down to the point where applications won't open. THis i usually fairly soon after bootup.

If I manage to open Task Manager there is an instance of svchost at around 80-90% with about 24Mb of Ram being used. If I terminate that process all is fine.

I know on XP Pro you can actually see which services a particular instance of svchost is controlling. Not the case on XP Home I think.

I also know that it is usual to see 4-5 instances of svchost running in the Task Manager. This is the case and the others are there but only at 0-2% with reasonable amounts of memory useage.

The XP Home installation is a clean one with SP2 and updates. I have run the usual full virus scans, HiJackThis, Spyware scans etc etc. Nothing found. It appears not to be related to anything obvious like the recently installed wireless connection.

Any suggestions or should I reinstall Windows ?

[Parapunter]

It's a part of the o/s & looks in the registry to see what services need loading up when the machine boots up. It can run several times concurrently, so no I wouldn't knee jerk to reinstall winders in a hurry.

However, there is a virus with the same name about & you can tell if it's that by checking the location of svchost.exe. It should be in C:\Windows\System32. If you find it anywhere else, it could be a virus. Run your avg.:ok:

[Lost_luggage34]

Well there's only 1 listing of svchost and it's in the \system32 directory so I don't believe there are any nasties lurking.

Just to make sure I have run various online scanners today in addition to a full scan with all of my utilities - just some simple tracking cookies.

I have disabled every service that is safe to do so and/or is unnecessary but the problem still exists.

Someone has suggested trying 'What's Running' so off to play with that ....

[Mac the Knife]

See http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=314056 for an explanation of svchost (service host). Here's another http://www.computerhaven.info/svchost.htm

To get a better look at what the operating system that you leased from Mr Gates is up to - download a copy of Process Explorer (free) from http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/ProcessExplorer.html and run it.

[Tone]

LL34
I have just had the same problem on my spare laptop. svchost,exe is hogging all the processor time. Even ignores Crtl/Alt/Del. Had a potter on Google and found some info there. I have tried running FixWelsh,exe from Symantec but with no success.

Seems to have lots of copies of svc.host running, some where you would expect (C:\windows\system32) and others in strange places.

Any suggestions welcome.
Tone

[Lost_luggage34]

Thanks Mac The Knife - will explore that tomorrow.

I am yet to find a pattern to the issue.

It's one of those 'sometimes' issues which are always fun to track down.

For some strange reason when I terminate the instance of svchost that is grabbing the resources, the Audio drivers for the Soundblaster card decide that they are not present.

So I know it the instance of svchost that controls the SB services - well a fairly safe assumption.

But with XP Home the 'Tasklist' command line input doesn't exists as it does in XP Pro.

To confirm, those who are really interested in this problem and the history - read my moanings about the Netgear wireless card install on a recent thread.

That will tell you that this is a very clean XP Home SP2 installation. BIOS at the latest level, VIA chipset updated (drives the PCI/AGP slots), AMD Duron 1Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 40Gb HD / 38Gb spare.

The issue comes to light without the Netgear sw/hw, with all updates - particularly MS Auto updates, any virus, firewall updates disabled.

I may just reformat and put Win2K on this particular PC. Seems to be a lot less trouble. I am a great fan of Win2K as I was about 98SE - I think that Win2K was about the only OS that MS got about right !!

Of course they had years of testing it under the guise of NT !!

[boguing]

I may just reformat and put Win2K on this particular PC. Seems to be a lot less trouble. I am a great fan of Win2K as I was about 98SE - I think that Win2K was about the only OS that MS got about right !!

Don't do that just yet. I've got the same problem on a W2K laptop. Started yesterday. Svchost.exe wouldn't allow me access to stop it (as admin).

Suspiciously, Spybot seems to have removed itself from the machine too. And I'm getting packet errors on the wifi - hints that it's a WEP problem, but I don't think so.

[Parapunter]

Just a thought, Svchost is something you're stuck with on xp, it can't run without it. Sooooo, if it's hogging the cpu at start up, I think an effective strategy would be to consider it from the device viewpoint.

Since it queries what services need starting in respect of soft & hardware & you've turned off all the services you think you can get away with, I would if it were mine, disable devices in turn one by one until I came across the offending piece.

Your soundcard got me thinking about this. In my experience, the biggest problem with XP is device drivers (media center is worse, far worse, god only knows how much of a pain vista will be), I reckon you might chance across a dodgy device sooner or later. Tip: don't kill your monitor or mouse:p

[Tone]

Hope I'm not speaking too soon here but I just downloaded the latest XP updates from MS - problem gone.

Flingers clossed.
Tone

[Jon B]

I had exactly this problem last w/e and wasted several hours until I read this post. Downloaded process explorer as suggested and identified the "Automatic Updates" service as the cuplrit behind svchost. Disabled this service and probelm is totally cured

Many Thanks