svchost.exe being an asshole

Inx

So svchost.exe seems to be using up 100% of my CPU. I have no idea how to fix it and it IS causing some trouble. Anyone know anything?

XP Home Edition service Pack 2, if that helps.

I've had the shittiest luck with computers in the past year, man.

Bendery It Like Beckham

Inx wrote: »

So svchost.exe seems to be using up 100% of my CPU. I have no idea how to fix it and it IS causing some trouble. Anyone know anything?

XP Home Edition service Pack 2, if that helps.

I've had the shittiest luck with computers in the past year, man.

SVChost is a generic exe that is tied to many different services your computer runs. You wont know what is causing SVChost to be a dick unless you find out what service is pulling all the CPU

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms732023.aspx

This has a lot of info about tracing the SVChost... but you've gotta be kinda savvy to use it.

L Ron Howard

There is an update you need to download.
Microsoft, in one of their patches, fucked it up so that svchost.exe uses 100% of the CPU 100% of the time, but the download to fix that is optional, and you have to manually go and tell it to download and install.
Just google "100% svchost.exe" and it will be one of the first couple of options.

Great Scott

Process Explorer (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653) will break down which exact service is abusing svchost.exe

It's a raw executable, it doesn't need to be installed.

Inx

Okay so how exactly do I use Process Explorer?

Also...it seems that I have something redirecting me whenever I try to google something. Like, I'll click a link and get redirected to something entirely unrelated.

What the hell did I do.

JustinSane07

Why are you still running SP2?

It may not fix the issue but upgrade to SP3.

Inx

Well, this computer got hobbled a while back when my brother decided that he knew how to fix an issue, and the fix was to reinstall windows.

The thing hasn't been the same since, and now this is just another problem.

I wish my laptop was working.

lolcomputers

JustinSane07

What hasn't been the same about it?

rockmonkey

If something is suddenly using heavy amounts of your PC's resources and your web browser is being redirected then these are both good signs that it is infected with something. Not 100% sure, it's just that the browser redirect screams infection.

Try to hop on another computer and download Malware Bytes and put it on a thumb drive then using that, install it on the infected PC. Depending on the virus/malware you may need to renamed the .exe to something besides it's regular name (which I think is mbam.exe if I remember correctly).
Let it run a full scan and then have it remove/clean/quartantine anything that pops up that is NOT your virus scanner that YOU installed. Note that a lot of malware the past few years poses as anti-virus software and has generic names such as Anti-Virus 2011 blah blah blah and is bad.

If at any point you see something specific pop up that would clue you in on to what specifically is the problem then do a google search based on that info and see how others handled it, and what's effective.