Daave , thanks for your comments
The problem was constant for a few days - now it looks like it is
sporadic ( although I keep my PC running to avoid 30 min start ups
) recently no freezes during normal operation
when it did happen - during this 20-30 sek freeze I was not able to
do anything
will process explorer show the culprit few seconds later - but when
I can use my PC again everything is back to normal, or is it?
I ran malwarebytes program - no malware found
I have win pro ver. 2002 with sp3 installed all other updates are
done regularly
I will definitely check svchost and let you know
I will also do a clean boot with out Norton and see how it goes
re NIS 2008 - I agree - that's why usually I do not install all the
newest programs I could install (because of CPU + RAM usage)
except for my security program which is NIS
thank you
using process explorer
I can see few svchost but they use 0% CPU
the highest is system idle process with 99-100% CPU usage
command line is blank, description blank, company name blank
I checked my other PC
system idle process takes approx 86- 97% CPU - for me it looks
high but it 10% less than my first PC
any comments?
Are we talking about a sporadic problem? That is, perhaps you were
not experiencing the "long system freeze" during the above
timeframe? Does your problem present itself during bootup usually?
If it is sporadic, Process Explorer will give you useful
information, but you need to be looking at it *during* the grinding
of the gears (not afterward). And since in another post you
indicated that one of your instances of svchost was through the
roof memory-wise, the Bleeping Computer tutorial should be helpful.
There have been reports of svchost.exe run amok after a particular
security update was applied. How up-to-date are you with your
Windows Updates? What Service Pack level are you at? Can you
recall when you started experiencing this particular problem as
well as anything significant that occurred at around that time?
Finally, I don't recall whether or not you confidently ruled out
malware. Sometimes an instance of svchost.exe running *is*
malicious. Svchost.exe is a valid file *if* it is in the correct
location, which should be: C:\WINDOWS\system32
If you have another svchost.exe in another loaction, it's surely
malware. Search your entire C: drive for svchost.exe. In "More
advanced options," be sure to check "Search system folders" and
"Search subfolders." Again, if you see another instance of
svchost.exe where it doesn't belong, you have a malware infection!
Last idea: You stated you had NIS 2008. Norton is well-known for
producing the kind of behavior you are describing. Configure a
clean boot (which means, among other things, you will be
temporarily disabling NIS 2008) and see if your problem goes away.
For more info:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310353
If your problem does go away, you should be able to use the process
of elimination to determine the cause. It wouldn't surprise me if
it's Norton.
