Help with 100% CPU at startup

[ECLiPSE 2002]

I am running Win XP SP3 and have 82 Gbs of hard drive free space and
1024 MB memory.

Lately when I first boot up the pc ever program or application bogs
don the pc and I get a notice in the sys tray telling me that 100% of
the CPU has been reached. When I look in Processes in Windows Task
Manager - I notice that I have 7 iterations of svchost.exe running.
One of these is using over 234,256K of memory and the others
considerably less. Also there is a process called wuauclt.exe that is
using almost 146,000K. The pc is frustratingly slow to perform any
function for over 2 hours. Later the speed increses dramatically and
the pc performs as in the past.

I don't know if the two processes mentioned are the cause, but when
the pc returns to normal speed, I notice that wuauclt is down to 212K
and the largest svchost is 13,284K and the rest are in the 1732K to
2288K range.

I would appreciate any input on whether the slow down is caused by the
two .exes discuused. Are these processes necessary or can they be
inactivated? Or should I be looking elsewhere for a cause.

Mary

 

[Stef]

I am running Win XP SP3 and have 82 Gbs of hard drive free space and
1024 MB memory.

Lately when I first boot up the pc ever program or application bogs
don the pc and I get a notice in the sys tray telling me that 100% of
the CPU has been reached. When I look in Processes in Windows Task
Manager - I notice that I have 7 iterations of svchost.exe running.
One of these is using over 234,256K of memory and the others
considerably less. Also there is a process called wuauclt.exe that is
using almost 146,000K. The pc is frustratingly slow to perform any
function for over 2 hours. Later the speed increses dramatically and
the pc performs as in the past.

I don't know if the two processes mentioned are the cause, but when
the pc returns to normal speed, I notice that wuauclt is down to 212K
and the largest svchost is 13,284K and the rest are in the 1732K to
2288K range.

I would appreciate any input on whether the slow down is caused by the
two .exes discuused. Are these processes necessary or can they be
inactivated? Or should I be looking elsewhere for a cause.

Mary

Turn off system Updates completely. Reboot your system, and see if
wuauclt.exe is gone. wuauclt.exe is the update program. If it's still
there, it's probably a trojan.

How does your system run, if you boot into Safe Mode with Networking?

Do a malware scan. Download the free versions of MalwareByte's
Antimalware and Superantispyware. Do full scans with both. You system
is probably badly infected.

http://www.malwarebytes.org/
http://superantispyware.com/


Stef

 

[Zilbandy]

It's Windows/Automatic/MS Updates. Disable its service and manually get
the updates (will still be slow and hogging CPU though, but you can
decide when to do it).

MS knows about it and will fix it according to
http://www.infoworld.com/t/microsof...s-xp-update-svchost-redline-issue-soon-230940
... Who knows when it will be fixed though especially with Thanksgiving
2013 and other holidays coming up.

Plus April 2014 is just around the corner. Why fix it unless something
is planned for after the EOL date?