svchost.exe problems

[Gam'ster]

Hello tpu,
Ok i have my gf's laptop here and its doin my nut in , ill explain.....
Its a pretty old lappy, cely 2.4ghz, 256 pc 2100 ddr ( running single channel ), 80g hd, winxp sp2
Model is acer travelmate 240
Anyway i have it running for about 2 mins after start up and there are 3 instances of svchost.exe running so nothing out of the norm, but then one svchost.exe starts eating memory and cpu, first its 25% then 50% and finnaly 100% and it will grind to a halt, ive tried nod32 and avg both jus grind to a halt become unresponsive and then i have to hit the power to turn it off.
I have searched tpu and others for similar probs but nothing like this.
Any ideas or should i just re-install ?

Many thanks
Gam

 

[Agility]

Well i rather you reinstall the entire OS. Placing back windows files doesn't seem as easy as it might be something that caused it to halt or probably some extension that crashed it.

 

[Wile E]

How long does it take to grind to a halt? Is there enough time to check the event log?

 

[lordlatte]

this sounds strange, but sometimes one of the svchost errors means windows updates failed at sometime. Have you done updates recently? If they failed recently, you've found your problem, if you haven't done it in awhile, that could also be your problem...That problem is wildly vague, and I have one other solution. I had the exact same problem for something that is just as stupid, I had one of the really old printers plugged in, parallel printer ports or something, long story short, it wasn't plugged into a printer, just the computer, and it made the cpu run at 100% at all times by way of svchost.exe, which is what it said was eating up the entire cpu. If you can find a program that details processes on a deeper level, find out what part of svchost.exe is eating up the cpu. I don't remember what I used, probably tuneup utilities, and it said some little thing was using the cpu, upon googling it, I found out it was the part that controlled the parallel printer port. Anyway, the moral is, find out exactly what is using all the power, more specifically than svchost.exe, then you'll be closer to diagnosing it, oh, and windows update, thats always a good thing to do.

 

[Gam'ster]

Nope not enough time to check event log only takes 30secs or so to get to 100% cpu then thats it , and i updated windows earlier could the recent up dates be it u think ?
thanks for the quick reply gents

 

[Wile E]

Hmmmm, what about safe mode?

 

[Gam'ster]

no go for safe mode, just stalls while booting into windows , im seriously at a loss on this one

 

[Wile E]

What happens if you try to kill that particular svchost?

 

[Gam'ster]

The operation could not be completed
access is denied, lol,

 

[Wile E]

Well I never had THAT happen to me. lol. If you kill the wrong svchost, it usually gives you the "System must shut down" error. It kinda sounds like you're infected.

Is there important data on the computer?

 

[Gam'ster]

Umm........ a few word docs i think, she only uses it for word and web browsing , it was fine till her sister got her chubby fingers on it grrrr, i fear a reinstall upon me

 

[Wile E]

That's the way it sounds. But I have a little trick if you need to pull stuff off of it without using another computer. Do an install of XP, but don't format the drive, reinstall right over top of the old install. Then you can pull the old data off, before doing a proper install with formatting.

 

[Gam'ster]

That's the way it sounds. But I have a little trick if you need to pull stuff off of it without using another computer. Do an install of XP, but don't format the drive, reinstall right over top of the old install. Then you can pull the old data off, before doing a proper install with formatting.

Ahh sweet ill give that a go a bit later, but its 06:34 am means i aint getting no sleep i need a few mugs of tea and a few ciggs , but id love to know what causes it ahh well
But massive thanks wile E much appreciated

Cheers Gam