services.exe is eating a ton of memory

[OmegaXero]

Services.exe randomly decides to eat tons of memory on some of my desktops and servers. Now, before anyone says anything, they are spyware free. I can post HJT logs if you want but I have triple checked these things. Spyware is not a factor in why this happens. It randomly happens to desktops and I have a few servers that have this problem as well.

When services.exe does start soaking up memory disk access goes through the roof. I can't figure out if its because the computer is out of memory and swapping to disk or if there is something being written to the hard drive.

I am making this post because I have searched these forums and the internet in general. Several other people seem to have had this problem and in every circumstance no one could ever figure out why this happens. My exchange server now has this issue and its starting to be a real annoyance. Rebooting the server does not help. Its running Windows 2003 with Service Pack 1. Any input or ideas on this subject would be greatly appreciated, I have exhausted all the options that I could think to try.

 

[OmegaXero]

Anybody?

 

[howardwp]

Hello,

I was able to resolve this problem by removing the offending file. There were actually 2 services.exe files on my system. The valid one was located in my C:\Windows\system32 directory. But there was also an invalid one that I was able to locate using the following command:

C:\>dir services.exe /S

The command searches the current directory and all subdirectories for services.exe. So it's best to enter the command on the root of C so that it can search your entire hard drive. The "/S" option causes the search to be performed on all subdirectories.

Once you have located the offending file you can rename it or delete it. Just make sure that you DON'T ALTER OR REMOVE THE VALID SERVICES.EXE file. I made this mistake and I needed to use a bootable disk in order to use my computer at all

Anyway, I hope this resolves your problem. Take care. And good luck.

Howard

 

[Fresh Daemon]

Try the Ars Technica forums. I'm not going to pretend I know the answer, but there are loads of Windows gurus over there and I'll bet at least one knows the exact cause of this.

 

[mechBgon]

What are you using for antivirus protection?