svchost.exe running at 60-99% CPU usage, ~ 55MB Memory

[wizdum]

As indicated in the title, every now and then my computer becomes extremely choppy and slow. When I look at my processes there is multiple svchost.exe's running, but there is one that is using anywhere from 60-99% of the CPU and taking up a hefty amount of memory, up to 85MB. I searched around on the internet but the "answers" are very diverse and vague. Oddly, this problem only seemed to happen late at night at first when I am usually gaming, around midnight. (DotA anyone?) However, recently it has been happening earlier and earlier. Because of the nature of this problem I fear it has something to do with the hardware, which sucks because I'm a poor college student. If no one here can solve this problem I will try formatting, and if that doesn't solve it I may splurge for some new RAM in an attempt to solve it. Thank you for your time and help. All input appreciated.


~ Jordan

 

[ayabe]

Antivirus update/scan? Windows creating a restore point? Check your scheduled tasks. Otherwise I would dump most of your bootup programs from MSCONFIG and try to isolate which app it is.

It's probably not a hardware problem.

 

[Fishy007]

Speaking of anti-virus, you do have one installed and updated right? I know that a few viruses pop out a process called SCVHOST (or something similar).
Also couldn't hurt to run something like spybot or ad-aware.

 

[l3ored]

i've had that problem before. doubly worse, it interferes with dota! reformat quick and get back to gaming.

 

[bwatson283]

i see them running on mine too. I end all of them and at least one wil restart within 5 seconds.

 

[ntdz]

Originally posted by: bwatson283
i see them running on mine too. I end all of them and at least one wil restart within 5 seconds.

That's because some of them are important for windows to work correctly.

 

[Smilin]

Run spyware removers? Kill svchost? Reformat????

Geez guys. How about at least taking the patients temperature before you sign him up for surgury? I'm surprised no one suggested a sledgehammer yet.

For starters find out what processes are in the svchost that you are worried about.

Run "tasklist /svc" from a command prompt and compare the process ID to the process ID in task manager that is busy. Use View | select colums.. if you don't see PID listed in task manager.

 

[cubby1223]

Seems to be a problem with some updates to Windows. Try and get the very latest updates. It's the svchost.exe that takes care of the visual styles, as ending the process will slowly screw up the visual styles until Windows restarts the process again. I've seen svchost.exe at 99% on almost every computer I've worked with the past couple weeks. But I've never seen it on my own computers at home, and I think it's because I have visual styles turned off on them all.

But getting the latest updates seems to help out a lot.

 

[RampantAndroid]

To revive an old topic: does anyone know the fix for this? I've got this issue as well (though it doesn't consume CPU time, it consumes around 80 megs of RAM) and I'm able to kill it in task manager.

I'm running Kaspersky Security Suite 6....and I've gotten no real notifications. A adware scan is running right now, and I'm going to run a virus scan again afterwards.

Thanks.

Edit -

When using IE7 and the windows update page was running a scan, it jumped 40 megs (from 26 megs RAM to 60 megs) - is IE 7 the cause?

when I checked services under a prompt:

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\Documents and Settings\main>tasklist/svc

Image Name PID Services
========================= ====== =============================================
System Idle Process 0 N/A
System 4 N/A
smss.exe 904 N/A
csrss.exe 1048 N/A
winlogon.exe 1072 N/A
services.exe 1120 Eventlog, PlugPlay
lsass.exe 1132 PolicyAgent, ProtectedStorage, SamSs
svchost.exe 1300 DcomLaunch, TermService
svchost.exe 1348 RpcSs
svchost.exe 1524 Dnscache
svchost.exe 1580 Alerter, LmHosts, RemoteRegistry, SSDPSRV,
WebClient
spoolsv.exe 1952 Spooler
CTSVCCDA.EXE 264 Creative Service for CDROM Access
cvpnd.exe 284 CVPND
mdm.exe 336 MDM
nvsvc32.exe 2396 NVSvc
oodag.exe 2408 O&O Defrag
svchost.exe 2624 stisvc
wdfmgr.exe 2660 UMWdf
alg.exe 3184 ALG
explorer.exe 320 N/A
CTHELPER.EXE 2616 N/A
CTXFIHLP.EXE 2648 N/A
DLLML.exe 1780 N/A
VolPanel.exe 2760 N/A
WDBtnMgr.exe 2904 N/A
CTXFISPI.EXE 1124 N/A
citrusac.exe 3100 N/A
ctfmon.exe 3116 N/A
PlexTool.exe 3228 N/A
NotiMan.exe 3704 N/A
wuauclt.exe 3016 N/A
wmplayer.exe 2040 N/A
RichVideo.exe 3764 RichVideo
svchost.exe 924 CryptSvc, EventSystem, helpsvc, Nla, RasMan,
Schedule, SENS, TapiSrv, Themes, winmgmt
taskmgr.exe 568 N/A
avp.exe 1092 N/A
avp.exe 1204 AVP
Ad-Aware.exe 6020 N/A
firefox.exe 3648 N/A
cmd.exe 5584 N/A
tasklist.exe 5064 N/A
wmiprvse.exe 4128 N/A

C:\Documents and Settings\main>

 

[redbeard1]

I've seen this a number of times lately, and found that somehow the windows update service is causing the problem. Disabling that service resolved it for me, but I was not able to find a good fix for it. On those systems I switched to using Autopatcher XP to get my windows updates, because even if I went to the update site manually, it would peg the CPU and I could not get the updates to complete.