svchost?

[GatorHunter]

Anyone got any ideas? My computer basically "locks up" while this "svchost" is running...nearly 100% of my processor is in use.

[DarthGator]

Do you have an HP printer?

[LakeGator]

SVCHOST is sort of a utility infielder in modern versions of Windows as described in this Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svchost). It is common for there to be multiple copies of it running and for it to sometimes take a significant amount of resources, especially CPU time. It seems to run higher than normal when Windows updates are being downloaded.

As the article above states, SVCHOST can be used to hide malware. Hopefully, you have good anti-virus and anti-spyware in place to help protect your system.

[umcpgator]

You can get a better idea of whats running if you you look in control panels, administrative tools, services. The services that are started are the ones that are currently running.

[GatorHunter]

Do you have an HP printer?

Yes............and use AVG and Spybot.

[helix139]

In the processes tab of task manager, right click the svchost process that is taking all your CPU cycles and select "Go To Service(s)." This will show you exactly which services are taking up your clock cycle. Let me know what you come up with.

[DarthGator]

The reason I asked about HP is over the years, I've seen HP software do this many times. I get the question: "My old computer is so slow, should I get a new one?" in the end, I have them remove their HP printer and bingo, it's back to normal.

So, it may sound extreme, after you try other steps, uninstall the HP software.

[Aardvark]

I haven't seen this running on my PC/laptop since I upgraded to Vista/Win 7.

[helix139]

to find out which particular service is causing the problem, right click on the appropriate svchost.exe in task manager and click on "go to service(s)"