There's a svchost.exe that hogs a lot of memory

[Narmer]

There's like 5 of these svchost.exe's but only one hogs the memory. Furthermore, it is the only one that willingly shutsdown when I tell it to in the Task Manager. The others force the computer to restart.

I just did a clean re-install of Windows XP Home after reformatting the hard drive. The Windows is legit. The problem started to happen immediately after the installation, before any other software was installed. What could be wrong here? Is this a real svchost.exe?

 

[cubby1223]

It's just happy it found some new updates from Microsoft to download & install. Svchost.exe usually gets a bit over-excited. Turn off automatic updates, use windowsupdate.com to install all critical updates, then re-enable automatic updates.

 

[Narmer]

Originally posted by: cubby1223
It's just happy it found some new updates from Microsoft to download & install. Svchost.exe usually gets a bit over-excited. Turn off automatic updates, use windowsupdate.com to install all critical updates, then re-enable automatic updates.

Thank you. I did what you said but it returned to 100% again. I think I'll just leave Automatic Updates Disabled.

 

[Schadenfroh]

process explorer will show you what each individual SVCHost is doing

 

[Commish]

Microsoft patch.

This has been a known issue since last summer/fall for many people. That link will take you to the patch that will fix your problem.