Computer Help -- svchost.exe is eating up my computer

Plane Sailing said:

I second Dismas' suggestion. It is really helpful to find what is running in each SVCHOST process if you've got any suspicious about nasty activity going on.

Cheers

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Oh smack, nice program, just DL it...oh yeah, do get this...one of many steps of curing the ills of computer woes.

Update: Just to let you know, this software will possibly make the OS run a sixth svchost exe, after DL that program(and ran it), I notice the increasement, not to worry though, it is not a virus run. Just wanted to kill the fear if you see it running higher in count.

*whistles blowing, hit the 500 mark*

Heh. I've had this computer's hard drive since 1999, back when it was operating on 64 MB of RAM, Windows 98, and a 366 MHz processor. She's been loyal to me, even through two formats of the hard drive and one crashed motherboard.

I've backed everything up, so it's time to check the virtual memory thingy and restart the computer, hoping for the best.

Truth Seeker said:

Ugh....only 6gigs???? No wonder, XP updates and installment takes up at least 3/4 of that...wow, it is a miracle it is still running. And by the way, when your space is being reduce by whatever you DL, you also shrink the virtual space reserve, forcing the system to take some drastic measures, if it is 'system' function on the scvhost.exe, all that the OS might be doing, is trying maintain functionally with all current operations, with what room it has.

And since you DL music, if you are using Peer to peer...those things are active software always. That might be something you may need to discontinue.

Good Luck.

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Ok I came to this thread late, but it does indded sound like your machine is laboring. A small HD and 128 megs of memory running Xp isnt good. More memory and a bigger HD will probably help. All the processes that Xp has on by default probably all cant get enough to run at the same time.

Did you always have Xp or upgrade to it? Maybe going back to 98 might be easier for you?

My computer is now down to 220 MB of free space, going down about 1 MB per second, so I have to type fast. I don't know what's going on, but I know that if I turn off svchost.exe, it stops. But maybe I should let this run its course.

I've had XP for 8 months, and there has been no problem at all. My computer looks like it'll die in the next three minutes, so I'll return to this thread from another computer, and hope someone knows how to fix what went wrong. *sniff*

P.S., this is the result of changing nothing. I just restarted, on the off chance it'd solve itself, and the computer is still going nuts. I'm pretty convinced it's not a 'virus,' but maybe some weird coding is going on. Why would my computer be filling up its memory?

Okay, so I stopped the process when my computer was down to 86 MB of free space. *sigh*

I did a search for files modified in the last day. I turned up one 110 MB file, called:

WindowsXP-SP2-x86fre-USA-2180-psf.blob

Does anyone know what that is? It's in
C:\WINDOWS\SoftwareDistribution\Download\S-1-5-18\8b5e9cdb91dddbb342695fbdc36fe0e4\download

Most of the other files in that folder were created back in 2001 or 2002, so that means they probably came on the XP CD, but this one was both created and modified today. It looks fishy.

Is it SVCHOST that is eating your PC... not SCVHOST

Are you shure it was SVCHOST and not SCVHOST? (mark the vc cv difference)

Some time ago I discovered the same kind of symptoms and noticed that there was a couple of SVCHOSTS and one SCVHOST process running (you hardly notice it until you sort the processess on name) Googling for SCVHOST, I found that the latter was indeed a mallicious program. Don't know exactly what I had to do, but I do remember I had to delete a number of files that had 1 letter different from genuine XP processess and had to do some editing in the registry. (notably removing a bunch of entries in the different "run" sections.

So I would say, make double sure what program is causing your problem and if it is SCVHOST, have a google for it and you'l find plenty of hits with removal instructions.

Sorry I can't be more of a help, but I thought the hint might be usefull.

I did get rid of this pest, put took me some effort, initialy I probably missed some files or registry entries and it just kept on coming back. As I understood from some of the pages, has something to do with the system restore function. Most of the pages have you shut down system restore before doing the cleaning.

Do run a good firewall and anti virus program. I've had 2 friends get virusses and worms in the span of a couple of minutes after conecting to the net. ("I'll install the firewall and stuf later, I just want to see if my internet is working.... did they get a wake up call!)

RangerWickett said:

Okay, so I stopped the process when my computer was down to 86 MB of free space. *sigh*

I did a search for files modified in the last day. I turned up one 110 MB file, called:

WindowsXP-SP2-x86fre-USA-2180-psf.blob

Does anyone know what that is? It's in
C:\WINDOWS\SoftwareDistribution\Download\S-1-5-18\8b5e9cdb91dddbb342695fbdc36fe0e4\download

Most of the other files in that folder were created back in 2001 or 2002, so that means they probably came on the XP CD, but this one was both created and modified today. It looks fishy.

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I'm not sure, but could you have autoupdate active and could it perchance be service pack 2 downloading? The .blob extension would mean Binary Large OBject.

Re: Drakhe.

I did just swing by the Microsoft website and see 'Service Pack 2' being announced on their main page. But the thing is, as far as I can tell the problem still happens even when the internet is disconnected, so it can't be downloading something.

Dang it. I would much rather deal with a crashing computer going to blue-screen than some sort of crazy self-writing loop or something. And whatever happened to the good old days of "Just make sure you don't open any .exe files from the internet, and you won't get a virus." Now apparently viruses can just tell my computer to get infected. I don't like it.

Damn, I am sorry to hear that, but with the foremention use of MS software DL on your system, sounds like a preset setup by MS. Let me explain, if your system is still SP1, your system is being prepped by MS for SP2, there will be minor changes, like on your Window Update Menu, that gets a new facelift.

Judging from what you have stated on the space being 'eaten', it does sounds like the system is trying to prep files, and there is almost no space to use.

The virtual memory(all free space taken up by files) , the 128 memory, almost swallow by OS operations, in other words, you have deny the OS to function normally, and it is force to ultilize what is space there, is left.

RW, I am sorry, but the best bet, of two choices, remove all the non- important stuff, you will need to get a gig of space, and that is pushing it, or...new hard drive, with bigger space.


Sorry my friend, but that HD is done, but please check the spelling on those programs, which I did forget myself, on the letter mixup. I will be posting links (on a new thread) to sites that helps with program file description function, I hope that the mod can make it a stickie, in fact, anyone should post very Helpful links on that, but not before that software was tested by that person themselves(yes, you will have to police yourself, be honest...getting banned is not nice).

It will be up later, hopefully around 1:30 a.m. (sorry, work up to the midnight shift)

*fingers crossed for RW*

Knowledge is Power...

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=837783&FR=1


Okay, read this, and see if it make sense to what is going with your system.