extremely frequent svchost

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Manson - 29 Mar 2007 20:50 GMT

Hello,

My PC is having very frequent "fits" of slowness that are due
to SVCHOST.exe tasks. They usually happen every 10-20 minutes. This causes
the system to become heavily overworked and temporarily crashes until
SVCHOST is done with whatever it has to do.

This SVCHOST seems to be the real authentic Windows process because I've
verified it several times with Windows Process Explorer. Also, if that's not
enough, I've killed the process once and it just disabled the sound card and
many other features in the PC, which highly suggests it is indeed SVCHOST.
I've also got loads of always up-to-date spyware/virus programs that never
accused it to be a bogus.

Now, I might be stupid, but I've never seen SVCHOST perform such heavy-duty
tasks so frequently in a machine. I start to wonder if it is just me. Could
someone explain to me why does it get used to often and why it slows
everything down? My machine may not be the greatest system in the world, but
it's fairly potent. Here follows its specifications:

Windows XP
2.93Mhz Intel Pentium 4
1.43 GB memory RAM
2 partitioned drives:
C: Drive (programs) is 30GB
D: Drive (all other data) is 110GB

I'm always defragmenting it, scanning for viruses and everything else. Both
drives only have 50% of their capacities taken. I don't know if that's just
me being silly, but I think this machine shouldn't be having this kind of
slowness problem.

Much obliged! :)

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Leonard Grey - 29 Mar 2007 21:15 GMT

Hello Manson:

The Global Host is merely a process that hosts other processes. If a
particular instance of svchost is giving your computer 'fits' you need
to find out which processes it is hosting - one or more of those hosted
processes is doing the deed.

Post again with the processes being hosted. Or if you like you can do a
web search on each one to identify what it is.

---
Leonard Grey
Errare humanum est

> Hello,
>
[quoted text clipped - 29 lines]
>
> Much obliged! :)

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needlove - 30 Mar 2007 00:35 GMT

Did you mean Windows process explorer (didn't know existed) or Windows task
manager or Process Explorer from sysinternals? In process explorer from
sysinternals you can double click your svchost.exe processes and in the
open box click the services tab to identify which service(s) that instance
of svchost.exe is running. In Windows task manager (Cnrl+Alt+Del) you can
determine whice processes are consuming the most CPU percentage and memory
usage by clicking twice on the colume's title box. This brings that process
to the top.

Once you determine what instance of svchost, meaning the services it is
hosting, are hogging your resources you can determine if those services are
needed. Some can be disabled or set to run manually, some have to be set to
automatic. You should follow a guide for this and write down the services
you change so you can quickly reverse the change if needed.

Here are some guides:

http://www.beemerworld.com/tips/servicesxp.htm

http://www.vernalex.com/tools/services/index.shtml

| Hello Manson:
|
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| >
| > Much obliged! :)

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ernie - 31 Mar 2007 07:41 GMT

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/ProcessesAndThreads/ProcessExplore
r.mspx

Dunno if this is M$ or Sysinternals but will it reveal the service which is
causing the instance of svchost using all the power?
Regards,
ern.

> Did you mean Windows process explorer (didn't know existed) or Windows task
> manager or Process Explorer from sysinternals? In process explorer from
[quoted text clipped - 76 lines]
> | >
> | > Much obliged! :)

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