[TravisT]

Hi, I just installed SBC Yahoo! DSL, and updated all of the MS Windows updates. Ever since then, my CPU usage hits 100% seemingly randomly. The culprit seems to be services.exe which uses 99%.

I am running win 2000, 1.2ghz AMD athlon processor, 512mb ram.

I ran spybot, adaware, and Symantec Antivirus 8.1 (all were fully updated) and found no problems.

Its really strange because the computer will be working fine for 5 minutes or whatever, and then suddenly slows down to drag. For instance I opened up my yahoo mail, read a couple of messages, and as soon as I hit reply, it slowed to a crawl.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

[Osiris]

Post your processes. Go to msconfig and disable all startup items except FW and AV. Reboot and see if that helps.

[c0rr0sive]

I had that problem my cpu usage would go 0%/%35/%100 then start over every 10 seconds... and it was caused by my System process..... Tryed a virus scan and it stoped

[Trotter]

Download Microsoft's AntiSpyware. It's free, and yuo can get it from Microsoft's website. Give it a go and see what it finds.

[TravisT]

Trotter - I DLed the MS AntiSpyware, and it didn't find anything. I'm pretty sure my CPU is clean.

Warez Monster - You can check my processes here. The first image is in regular mode, the second is running in safe mode.

Besides that, I have installed the Startup Control Panel, and even when I turn every extra startup item off, my computer still does it.

Thanks for your ideas. I feel like this is a problem with some patch I updated from Windows, but I cant be sure.

[Osiris]

So you went to System Configuration Utility and disabled everything from the startup tab, rebooted and you still have the problem? I still see items in there that shouldnt be running unless you have them open when you took the screen shot. Example is Acrotray.exe etc.

[Win2kpatcher]

Kill out these process's from the list and see what the CPU usage does and also see if the process's come back on there own...

defwatch.exe
winmgmt.exe
mstask.exe
regsvc.exe


then also in your task manager go to VIEW>SELECT COLUMNS then check user name so we can see who is launching those services.

[TravisT]

Ok, so I tried to delete these:
defwatch.exe
winmgmt.exe
mstask.exe
regsvc.exe

I could only delete defwatch by turning it off in my Startup Control Panel. Windows wouldn't let me delete the others.

You can see it here: CPU Processes

This is how it looks when it gets to 100% cpu usage, SERVICES.EXE is always at 99.

I have never used msconfig, but I thought that the startup control panel was just as good. I'll try that next.

[Sui]

services.msc in the Run box. Goto http://www.blackviper.com/WIN2K/servicecfg.htm and start triming ****.

Edit: try to keep log or remember what you change, if something doesn't work right afterward it'll save you some time.

[TravisT]

Sui,

Thanks for the link. I went ahead and set all of the services to the "SAFE" mode as listed on that page. It seems to be running better (starup is much faster) but it is still hitting the ceiling now and then. SERVICES.EXE is still using 5 out of every 25 minutes or so of CPU time (at 99).