svchost Maxing CPU

[HotShotX]

Yeah, I have the common Windows failure, and I've tried a number of things to try to fix it, to no avail. Any suggestions on how to kill this beast for good?

http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/9122/svchost.png

~HotShotX

[n25philly]

shut off your computer.

Seriously though svchost are typically important processes not failures. If you want to see if you can reduce cpu usage see what processes are actually using your cpu (those are all using 0%) and stop the process if you can

[Koggit]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svchost#Performance_issues

Because svchost.exe is used as a common system process, some malware often uses a process name of "svchost.exe" to disguise itself. Determining the image path of a process, and its invoking command line, can help identify software masquerading in this way, and help locate the actual program file which is running under the assumed process name of "svchost.exe"




I don't think the above needs any sort of jargon-to-english translation, but just to be super clear, when you find your CPU being maxed out without clear reason, right click the high-CPU process(es) and check the properties to see if it's something you actually want to have on your computer. It's possible that it isn't malware, it might be some sort of indexing service or defrag utility or something like that... if, on the Properties window, the Location looks suspicious, google the .dll being used to see if it's considered malware. If it is malware and general scans aren't finding/removing it, google "[malware name] removal utility" and you'll likely find a script made for removing it.

[franz ferdinand]

svchost.exe runs any number of services. You need to see which one is really hogging your CPU. Process Explorer (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx), from Micrsosoft/SysInternals, is a good tool for this sort of thing.