svchost.exe using 100% cpu!

[Anonymous]

Hi,
Anyone know about the svchost.exe problem in wich the proces svchost.exe uses 100% of the cpu? :'( Ending this process leads to sound failures, automatic reboots etc. :(
Not ending it leaves the comp slow ofcourse. Comp worked fine before. This svchost.exe problem showed up out of nowhere and now I don't know how to stop it from using my entire cpu. Anyone have any idea? :-\ Thanx.

[Anonymous]

hy try removin it from registry or startup or from config :)
just look out whers it located. :) n delete it :)

[Dani]

I think what Abbas Mirza means is that you should go to "msconfig" and try disabling svchost.exe from there so that it never loads at startup. This way, you aren't disabling it from inside Windows. Instead, you are not enabling it to begin with.

I'd like to make something clear though: svchost.exe is a native Windows process which really should be left on. Is it possible that a virus has attached itself to this file, and that is what is causing the huge cpu load? By nature the program eats a lot of cpu time, but not this much!

[Tekmaven]

I concur with techtalk girl. Maybe you guys wanna sign up :-)

[MAD_DOG]

Let me ask you something. Are you running Disk Keeper? Yes or No you will be surprised by the results if you. Maximum PC did a whole article on Disk Keeper.

[Anonymous]

Hey guys,

I found out the problem to be after searching for about 3 hours that it was the service telephony that was causing the problem. Once I disabled it and restarted the comp and the cpu didn't head back up to 100% anymore. I think this may vary form person to person but when you get a problem like you should first find out wich service is running under the svchost.exe proces and try disabling each service that started under svchost.exe one by one. Eventually you'll kill the service that screwing up. It might take sometime to find that service cause your comp may hang or restart itself etc. But if you keep trying you'll find it. ;D

Goodluck to everyone who has this problem. ;)

[Dani]

Jason, thank you for replying with the solution. Hopefully this will help out others in the future. It's really great when people we help respond. Sometimes it feels like it's pointless giving people advice when you never know how it turns out. OK that's just me rambling! Certainly not aimed at you! Thanks again ... And good luck with all your computing!

[Anonymous]

Doeas anyone have any other solutions? I have the same problem, but have narrowed it down to the "Network Connections" service. This one doesn't let me disable it, and in any case it's vital if you want to use a network.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance,

Robin.

[pcmaintenance_m]

This is my first post. I was searching for a solution to this problem and ended up here. I noticed this problem after removing the blaster worm virus. I thought it might be a variant but I haven't found any other viruses. I am running Diskkeeper but I don't see how THAT could have anything to do with this problem but I am going to do some investigation. Not running the "svchost.exe" file at all isn't a solution because I am running a network. If disabling the Telephony service doesn't work, there is another copy of the file in the "\windows\system\dllcache" directory so I think I am going to copy that over the existing file to see if I have any luck. I am not at my computer now so I can't try any of these suggestions but I will update all of you when I can again.

[blaster1]

I had the same problem with the svchost.exe network service using 100% of the cpu time for a few minutes when initially started. I'm using Windows XP Home. This happen when I connected to the internet (using DSL) and tried to access it by starting the browser or any other program that tried to use the internet. After what seemed forever, once svchost.exe network service had finished loading whatever it was loading, it was fine from then on for using the internet. For my case I tracked it to having a large HOSTS file. I had a large HOSTS file, which I downloaded from SpyBot and other sites to help block ads, etc. My final HOSTS file was 925 KB. I even tried a smaller 375 KB HOSTS file with out any luck. It wasn't until I used a HOSTS file of 46 KB that the time to connect was returned to a reasonable fast time. I hope this helps someone, since my search of the Internet on this problem didn't find anything.

[BennettB]

I am overjoyed to see people discussing the Local Network SVCHOST. This has caused me no end of pain. The computer will not allow me to shut it down through Task Manager. It says that Access is Denied. I am an admin. Any suggestions?

[BryanA917]

On the subject of Proccesses running 99% of the CPU in WinXP, is it bad to right-click them in the Task Manager and lower their priority? That ended up being the solution when I had a problem with MCShield and its 99% CPU usage.

Maybe there's a chance that the screwy hijacker thinks it's still giving you a hard time but Windows is simply ignoring it thereby freeing up the computer for you? -The end of my WinXP story is not happy, but that was a victorious moment when I lowered the Priority....

That might also be a way to get around "Access is Denied" for you, BennettB. Don't make it disappear, just make it quiet.

[Dark_Omen]

you should first find out wich service is running under the svchost.exe proces and try disabling each service that started under svchost.exe one by one.

Hi I am having the same problem were svchost is taking up all of my processor. And I was wondering how to look at each process running under this program.

[DMR]

Much information on svchost, the legit Windows programs that use it, viewing the programs that are using it, and how it can be compromised by a virus or other hack, can be found here:

http://ask-leo.com/archives/000105.html

:)

[AskLeo]

Thanks for the link. FWIW I do try to keep that article, and several related to the same topic, up to date.

Enjoy,

Leo

[DMR]

Good to know Leo- thanks. :)

[aSeptik]

Hi All!!!

To resolve this problem:

Svchost.exe Takes 99% of CPU memory Usage

go to my Home and read the article!

Regards,

aSeptik

[DMR]

Hi All!!!

To resolve this problem:

Svchost.exe Takes 99% of CPU memory Usage

go to my Home and read the article!

Regards,

aSeptik

justsched.exe is certainly one culprit, but unfortunately, there are many more causes for excessive resource usage than the one given on your page.

[paulgoundry]

I may have found the answer - this worked for me and took 2 min to sort the problem!

I found it here: http://www.it-digger.com/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=2&forum=14

This problem is caused by Microsoft Windows Installer 3.1 v2 (Msi.dll version 3.1.4000.2435) that tries to scan for Microsoft Office update.

There are a number of ways to correct this (bug)!! The following is what I did and it worked:

1. Go to the the Microsoft Update page:
2. Click 'Change settings' on the left tap
3. Click the option at the bottom of the page to disable microsoft update.

Once it was disabled, I rebooted and the problem was gone!!!

I am a happy boy!

Other solution:

-*- obtain the Microsoft updated version of Msi.dll (version 3.1.4000.2805)
(There is no link at the moment of writing this article you must contact Microsoft Product Support Services)!!!!!!

[pitputin]

Dummy description of svchost.exe is that it acts as an agent for different applications. It fetches or gets its "manual" and does what it's told. This means that if its manual is corrupted ( due to some biterror somewhere along the path) it can loop, get nowhere, ask for more and more resources and never finish.
In that case it is possible to run msconfig from /Run and type "tasklist /svc" and figure out which processses that asks for its help, and by trial-and-error detect which process that is the cause of the problem. ( Important thing is that its not the process that calls svchost that is corrupted, most likely it is the "manual" it presents for svchost) Good ol' reinstallment of the application that runs the process is nr1 thing to do... if you detect the process that is.
Deleting the svchost.exe file will most likely not solve your problem and is neither advisable as it is being used by multiple applications on your system ranging from detecting network channels to displaying nice fonts..The problem is most likely not the svchost.exe itself.

The "manual" I mention is a .dll file

Case 2 is trickier:

Hackers can design a process or thread that calls svchost.exe to do certain instructions, then imediatly it will shut itself down, making it harder to detect it in tasklist, as the process is already terminated and maybe designed to cover its identity as even being seen as a process to the operating system.

Svchost.exe though has not terminated, it either does heavy amounts of work that leads to nowhere but eats resources ( picture you get put to dig a hole in the ground, and when it is deep enough , you are instructed to fill it), or it can easily enough be asked to ask CPU for loads of resources ( "o'boy mr CPU.. heavy shipment coming in, I need your full attention") but no work is ever being done. This can explain the reason why it jumps from 10% to100% back and forth. Regardless of the two ways a hacker can "trick" svchost.exe to do work w/o any goal other than to eat CPU resources, problem is still the fact that it gets initiated by a process or thread no longer running. If you can find a suspicious process in your pc, sure.. it might be it, but a virus program will never find these as it has no similarity to any virus. Format the computer and reinstall :/

For those who wants to see what happens when svchost.exe is deleted, when you get the Shutdown in 50 seconds timer, type shutdown -a in /Run to terminate the timer

[Leo G]

Turn off automatic updates in the security center.

[AdrianR]

Ok - it took a long time wading through the thousands of posts on this issue, trying a few to no success to hit on the answer.

As PaulGoundry stated earlier in this thread - the main culprit for this is Windows Update - not virus's etc (although you certainly need to check for these).

Anyway the solution that appears to have worked for me completely comes from Microsoft (no registry hacking, turning things off etc).

This solution was copied from -
http://www.somelifeblog.com/2007/05/windows-xp-svchostexe-100-cpu-high.html
Thanks Ken.

Download and install KB927891 from Micrsoft (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927891) and then download the new Windows Update Agent again from MS (http://download.windowsupdate.com/v7/windowsupdate/redist/standalone/WindowsUpdateAgent30-x86.exe).

This seems to have worked for me (so far) ...

[Appzmaster]

thanks ive also hosted a zip file with the 2 files and an instruction file if ne 1 needs it http://consoleunity.info/564700

[AdrianR]

Microsoft has finally formally acknowledged this, Windows Update announced KB927891 this morning (5/23/2007) and the description includes the statement that "the Windows Update client MUST be updated to version 3.0". http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927891.

[moharr]

Thanks to the many gurus who posted info on this topic.
Discovered these runaway svchost processes a few days
ago, tried the usual suspects (spyware, visrus) to no avail.
Great site, thanks.

[jimmy55]

I may have found the answer - this worked for me and took 2 min to sort the problem!

I found it here: http://www.it-digger.com/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=2&forum=14

This problem is caused by Microsoft Windows Installer 3.1 v2 (Msi.dll version 3.1.4000.2435) that tries to scan for Microsoft Office update.

There are a number of ways to correct this (bug)!! The following is what I did and it worked:

1. Go to the the Microsoft Update page:
2. Click 'Change settings' on the left tap
3. Click the option at the bottom of the page to disable microsoft update.

Once it was disabled, I rebooted and the problem was gone!!!

I am a happy boy!

Other solution:

-*- obtain the Microsoft updated version of Msi.dll (version 3.1.4000.2805)
(There is no link at the moment of writing this article you must contact Microsoft Product Support Services)!!!!!!

i was having the same problem; and you don't have to even restart in order for it to work. you can actually open task manager and watch svchost change as you enable and disable automatic updates... kind of funny, i wish i could figure it out and still have automatic turned on...

[AdrianR]

Sure - since this "solution" is turning off Windows Update, you wont see the 100% CPU issue. The proper solution is, however, to fix Windows Update rather than turn it off. See the earlier posts in this thread to fix Windows Update itself.

[Leo G]

After reading through all the MS gibberish and clicking through many pages and reading and reading it finally lead me to this page which has the MSI.DLL update for a direct download to your computer.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=7A81B0CD-A0B9-497E-8A89-404327772E5A&displaylang=en#QuickInfoContainer

Press continue to have MS validate your system and then download after your system has been validated.

I did this but I still can't get any updates, it says it is a two part process and the 2nd part is to update the 'Update Client 3.0'. How do you update to Client 3.0? I didn't find the update for it, anyone know how?

Here is the update paragraph from MS

Note This article discusses the MSI component fixes only. This fix is one component of a two-part fix that includes a Windows Update client software update. These updates will be deployed automatically using Windows Update in May 2007 and June 2007. However, some customers may select to manually install these updates. To fully address the unresponsive system issue, both this fix for MSI must be installed and the Windows Update client must be updated to version 3.0. When you install the MSI fix and the new client, process-monitoring tools may still show CPU usage at near 100 percent. However, the system should still be responsive and should not lock up. If another task requires CPU cycles, they will be shared. However, if the system is idle, MSI will use the full cycles that are available to complete in the shortest time. If another task is running at the same time as MSI, the system may run slightly more slowly. However, the computer should still be responsive. Remember that you must install the MSI fix and the new client to address unresponsive or locked systems. It is expected that process-monitoring tools may still show CPU usage at near 100 percent, but computer unresponsiveness is not expected. If you watch the process monitor, you may still see CPU usage at near 100 percent during some scans if the computer is otherwise idle. This is expected behavior.

[fitpro]

I'm running XP Professional and last week the svchost.exe program began consuming 98-99% of my CPU usage.

I tried the many fixes including downloads, turning off updates, etc, but what finally took care of it was disabling my modem (which I almost never use). Apparently it was damaged during a lightning storm last week...the surge protector worked for the power, but I didn't have one on the phone line. I had no idea the modem was even damaged till I tried to send a fax.

Jan

[hamada_1990]

me 2 :'(