Services.exe Memory leak and excessive CPU utilization.

[Bob Burrough]

Anybody have this problem? What is fix? Memory usage
continually grows and CPU utilization climbs until system
hangs. System response slows to unacceptable level.

Thanks,
Bob Burrough

 

[Guest]

I am having a similar problem. My services.exe consumes 99% of the CPU for several minutes at a time. It started with the installation of Service Pack 4 for Windows 2000 Professional. Certain things apparently trigger it, other times it appears to be random. When I run America Online 9.0, it happens immediately. The memory usage for services.exe usually only hits 10 MB or so on my machine, but the thing will be locked up for 5 to 10 minutes. Then, it will suddenly recover and work fine for a while. If I use my Copernic Agent search utility, it happens every other time or so. I can find nothing in Microsoft's KnowledgeBase about it. It is starting to drive me crazy, since I am very frequently in the middle of designing something on my machine, and it locks up and I can't save my files and reboot, which is the only thing that really makes the machine get back to normal.

 

[eulg]

Same problem.
Any idea?

 

[RCK]

One cause of this problem is having a very large hosts
file. Products like AdAware or Spybot Search & Destroy
put 300K of misdirected entries in hosts to prevent your
browser from reaching spyware site addresses. This should
not cause any difficulty, but Windows 2K services.exe
cannot handle it. Go to %SystemRoot%\system32\drivers\etc
and check your hosts file. Good luck.

-----Original Message-----
I am having a similar problem. My services.exe consumes

99% of the CPU for several minutes at a time. It started
with the installation of Service Pack 4 for Windows 2000
Professional. Certain things apparently trigger it, other
times it appears to be random. When I run America Online
9.0, it happens immediately. The memory usage for
services.exe usually only hits 10 MB or so on my machine,
but the thing will be locked up for 5 to 10 minutes.
Then, it will suddenly recover and work fine for a while.
If I use my Copernic Agent search utility, it happens
every other time or so. I can find nothing in Microsoft's
KnowledgeBase about it. It is starting to drive me crazy,
since I am very frequently in the middle of designing
something on my machine, and it locks up and I can't save
my files and reboot, which is the only thing that really
makes the machine get back to normal.

 

[Bill James]

You must be thinking of a different product. I run both AdAware and Spybot on my system and have no entries in Hosts at all.

--

Bill James
Microsoft MVP - Shell/User

Win9x VBScript Utilities » www.billsway.com/vbspage/
Windows Tweaks & Tips » www.billsway.com/notes_public/

 

[Spinner]

I run both AdAware and Spybot and have no added entries in my hosts file.
Just what are these entries they have added to yours?

 

[neely]

I run AdAware and my hosts file was 385k. I installed it
because Microsoft Support suggested I do so. But I was
still having excessive popup issues so I purchased the
full-blown version of Adaware - perhaps this is the
version that fills up the hosts file.

Anyway, I am so grateful for the message from RCK. I got
rid of excess entries in my hosts file and I'm no longer
plagued with Services spiking to 100% for 10 minutes all
the time!

-----Original Message-----
You must be thinking of a different product. I run both

AdAware and Spybot on my system and have no entries in
Hosts at all.

--

Bill James
Microsoft MVP - Shell/User

Win9x VBScript Utilities » www.billsway.com/vbspage/
Windows Tweaks & Tips » www.billsway.com/notes_public/

"RCK" <[email protected]> wrote

in message news:[email protected]...

 

[Bill James]

I'm sort of wondering if it was another tool that created such a big hosts file. While it was never intended for such purpose, the hosts file can be used to block ads on web pages by setting those domains to use the localhost IP address. While this doesn't block popups, it does cause many of them to have no content if they are from one of the blocked addresses. I have done that in the past, but it is almost impossible to maintain as new ad sites are created constantly and I gave it up about a year ago. At that time my hosts file was over 500 KB with several thousand lines in it. If a person searches a little on Google they can find sample hosts files for this purpose, but it's hard to tell what is included and you may find that the creator was over eager and along with blocking ads they also blocked such things as news pictures at CNN for example. I never noticed any performance problems from such a large hosts file, even on a 300 MHz laptop I was using at the time. It was just too much hassle to keep up with. For a actual program to use hosts is really pretty sloppy since there are better, more efficient, ways to accomplish the same thing.

--

Bill James
Microsoft MVP - Shell/User

Win9x VBScript Utilities » www.billsway.com/vbspage/
Windows Tweaks & Tips » www.billsway.com/notes_public/

I run AdAware and my hosts file was 385k. I installed it
because Microsoft Support suggested I do so. But I was
still having excessive popup issues so I purchased the
full-blown version of Adaware - perhaps this is the
version that fills up the hosts file.

Anyway, I am so grateful for the message from RCK. I got
rid of excess entries in my hosts file and I'm no longer
plagued with Services spiking to 100% for 10 minutes all
the time!

-----Original Message-----
You must be thinking of a different product. I run both

AdAware and Spybot on my system and have no entries in
Hosts at all.

--

Bill James
Microsoft MVP - Shell/User

Win9x VBScript Utilities » www.billsway.com/vbspage/
Windows Tweaks & Tips » www.billsway.com/notes_public/

"RCK" <[email protected]> wrote

in message news:[email protected]...

 

[Guest]

If you run SpyBot in advanced mode, there is an option to load known ad/spy ware sites. This filled my hosts file to 303kb. I had uninstalled SpyBot but the problem persisted. Uninstalling did not remove the entries from the hosts file. I manually deleted the extra entries which are clearly marked as added by SpyBot, and do not seem to have the problem any longer. This problem is in knowledge base article 328885 but this solution isn't. I am running W2K SP4

----- Spinner wrote: ----

I run both AdAware and Spybot and have no added entries in my hosts file
Just what are these entries they have added to yours

 

[dcdon]

You might try this site to look another perspective on not
allowing "data miners" have your DNS. Try it.
http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/
I have tried it for some 30 days and haven't had any adverse
effects. Tell me what you think. I don't have anything to do
with the site, except, I have sent several site addresses to
them.

--
Best regards,
don
Please reply in the NG
Email on auto delete,
" Do a kind deed for someone less fortunate everyday."
"When you do, it will warm God's heart"
========================
message

If you run SpyBot in advanced mode, there is an option
to load known ad/spy ware sites. This filled my hosts file
to 303kb. I had uninstalled SpyBot but the problem
persisted. Uninstalling did not remove the entries from the
hosts file. I manually deleted the extra entries which are
clearly marked as added by SpyBot, and do not seem to have
the problem any longer. This problem is in knowledge base
article 328885 but this solution isn't. I am running W2K
SP4.

----- Spinner wrote: -----

I run both AdAware and Spybot and have no added entries
in my hosts file.
Just what are these entries they have added to yours?

"RCK" <[email protected]>
wrote in message

 

[Guest]

Thank you for your solution. I deleted my hosts file which was 303K and, SO FAR, my system is back to normal. I am able to do several things at once without having to reboot. Today I couldn't even get my system to boot. I tried many times and it finally came up. It wouldn't even come up in safe mode. I shut off power at least 15 times before it came awake. I started searching for a solution (Microsoft was worthless as usual. I have had SP4 for quite awhile) and came across your idea. It worked. Thanks.