CPU hogged by svchost - XP Home
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 ?