Windows XP SP2 freezing for 2-3 minutes with SVCHOST.EXE at 99% CPU usage

[markschmidt]

With a HP NC6120 laptop running wired or wireless connection, XP virtually freezes for a few minutes. I can use task manager to see that SVCHOST.EXE is running at 99% CPU utilization. After a few minutes it stops and the PC is fine. Do you know where to look or what might be causing this?

 

[Sjbrand99]

The svchost.exe file is located in the folder C:\Windows\System32. In other cases, svchost.exe is a virus, spyware, trojan or worm!

Check now to see if this certain process (because their are many svchost.exe processes).
To check this, right click on My Computer.... Manage.... processes and see if you can get the path from it in the list.

Also, not recommended, but if you want to check to see if it is a virus/worm, then simply try killing the process in TM and if your computer is fine then it is a Trojan pretending to be a MS process. If it is, then you should see a message either telling you that you cannot stop it, or that your computer must now shut down due to the killing of the vital process.

 

[beef_jerky4104]

Svchost.exe is ussually a safe process. Sometimes it can get infected by malware. Actually there should be about 5 different copies of it self running at a time. To test if its a virus simply kill the process and if the PC runs fine its probably malware.