[septimus]

I've looked all over the web for a fix to this but it eludes me, so I'm posting here

Windows 2000 Pro + Service Pack 2:

Services.exe shoots up to 100% CPU usage without fail every 2 hours at 5 minutes to the hour (i.e. 6:55, 8:55) and makes everything slow to a halt for 55 seconds. It's only started doing this for the last few days. I've checked through my services and disabled everything I can think of that isn't needed, but to no avail. I have adequate virus and spyware detection so that's ruled out. Any ideas?

[Denver_80203]

Perhaps the virus and spyware detection are the actual problems... try turning them off for a while?

[septimus]

I discovered the problem - an inordinately large Hosts file. It seems windows likes to check or refresh it every 2 hours - and that eats up 100% of your CPU time if you have a lot of entries in it.