[Avalanche]

So I noticed that I was having too much going on on my cpu yet again, during idle. I thought I had fixed it with getting rid of McAfee, which did help, but the problem started to come back. I swapped around all sorts of drivers and software, nothing was making any difference.

Just now I noticed while looking as the task manager that it was svchost.exe that was eating cpu time. I know that svchost.exe is just a generic process host for dlls and vxds etc, so I know it's not specifically svchost.exe that is causing this to happen.

Just on a whim I right clicked on the process and clicked on "end process tree" and boom, my idle went right back to 0%.

So my question is, how do I find out what dll, or vxd is hanging there in svchost.exe and causing it to eat cpu cycles?

And if I do find out what it is, can I stop it from hangning like it is, and get things back to normal?

Will this require a reinstall?

Lately I ask for much more help than I offer around here, but you guys always are good at helping out, and I am grateful for any help you might be able to provide!

Thanks.

PS. I have some suspicions about my soundcard drivers, but it doesn't seem to matter which version of these drivers I try, the problem stays, so maybe I'm wrong, but I've had trouble with them before.

[jimf43]

Try DllShow...

http://www.gregorybraun.com/DLLShow.html

[Avalanche]

Thanks for the help.

I've moved the soundcard to another pci slot.

Nothing to report just yet, it seems to take an hour or so of uptime before the problem becomes apparent.

I'll post back later with my results.

Thanks.

[Avalanche]

Well I think I can say that that probably fixed it. Uptime now at just shy of 2 hours and idle is still sticking to 0%.

I've heard of swapping cards around to clear up irq conflicts, but why would it solve an issue of the drivers files hanging in svchost.exe?

Not that I doubt it, it's just bafflling to me.

I must say this new motherbaord of mine had been quite a bit more of a pain than my old board. Everybody said that old kt133a chipset was nothing but trouble, yet I have nothing but good things to say about that old board. Most say this new kt400 is a good and basically trouble free chipset. I must say my experience seems to be just the opposite.

None of the troubles I've had have been unsolvable, but still I just didn't have troubles with that old board.

Anyways thanks.

[Nemesis]

Avalanche,

Got Systinternals website a download their Process Explorer, this will should show you the process underneathe the SVCHOST.EXE:

http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/procexp.shtml

[Avalanche]

Hey thanks Nemesis, that's a great little app, tells you everything running under the host processes, and works exactly the same as the Task Mananger, thanks. Even though it looks like I've solved the problem, I'll hang onto this program.

AlecStaar, thanks for the info on how driver IO works, it explains why I had this trouble. I don't doubt it's a problem with shoddy coding in the drivers, hercules seems to have a reputation nearly as bad as Creative for building terrible drivers.

Thanks again.

[Avalanche]

Well big surprise here, I was wrong again.

The problem is still there.

It just seems to take longer to show up.

that Process Explorer program tells me that the copy of svchost.exe that is eating cpu cycles doesn't run any files associated with my sound card drivers at all. I see though that as windows chugs along svchost.exe continually picks up more and more "handles" to a point where it reaches around 100 processes being hosted by it.

Unfortunately Process Explorer can't tell me which individual dll is causing the cpu hogging, just that it is the copy of svchost.exe running as a Local Service.

Again, right clicking on svchost.exe and choosing End Process Tree sends the cpu back down to 0%, and the "handles" of the process goes down to between 35 - 37.

If you need a list of dlls handled by this copy of svchost.exe I can provide it, I just don't want to spend the time typing it out if I don't have to.

[Avalanche]

Here's a screenshot of Process Explorer's read on what's going on with the svchost.exe Local Service.


If you look at my task bar there, I'm running Trillian, eMule, Sygate FireWall, AVG ANtiVirus, Meeya Popup Ad Filter, and my Souncard Drivers

It makes no difference which of these programs are or are not running. After about 2 hours of running svchost.exe starts doing this.

I'll run System File Checker here in a minute after I've finished this post.

[Avalanche]

Forgive my ignorance, but this is the first time I've ever run system file checker. I ran it, used the /scannow switch and it went through a scan, took about 10 minutes, and when it was done it just quit. It didn't tell me if it did anything or what.

So I checked back with the task manager and it doesn't look like anything has changed at all. Process Explorer also shows the same number of handles and the dlls all show up as the same versions.

[Avalanche]

My firewall (sygate) doesn't seem to think that anything is going on that's out of the ordinary. I'm not getting any unusual activity at all as far as I can tell.

Process Explorer is a great little tool , but it doesn't let me kill individual processes on the tree, just see them, so I wouldn't know how to kill SSDP or Remote Registry Service.

netstat tells me that I have no connections (right this second anyway) other than Outlook connecting to my mail server, and Trillian accessing the yahoo and MSM servers.

Tomorrow I'm gonna bite the bullet and reinstall windows, it seems to me that it'll take less time doing that than tracking this down any further. If the problem remains after that, then it must be a buggy driver, but there won't be much I can do about it, seeing as all the drivers for my soundcard have no effect, and I can't exactly just remove my motherboard.

[Avalanche]

I have experiemented with not running and running certain apps. infact I have just booted windows, and done nothing for 3 hours, and when I loaded task manager, the cpu was idling at 30%.

I doubt it is trillian.

I might try booting into safe mode and doing the same thing, if it does, then I know it's not sound or network driver.

[Avalanche]

I just looked through my system information, can't think of why, but I hadn't done that in ages.

Anyhoo, here's what it says.

IRQ0 - System Timer
IRQ1 - Keyboard
IRQ3 - COM2
IRQ4 - COM1
IRQ6 - Floppy Controller
IRQ8 - System CMOS/Realtime Clock
IRQ9 - Microsoft ACPI Compliant System
IRQ13 - Numeric Data Processor
IRQ14 - Primary IDE Channel
IRQ15 - Secondary IDE Channel
IRQ16 - NVIDIA GeForce2Ti
IRQ18 - Hercules Game Theater XP
IRQ19 - Linksys LNE100TX Fast Ethernet Adapter (LNE100TXv4)
IRQ21 - VIA Rev5 USB Universal Host Controller
IRQ21 - VIA Rev5 USB Universal Host Controller
IRQ21 - VIA Rev5 USB Universal Host Controller

I didn't even know IRQs went as high as 21, but from what I gather, VIA's implimentation of it's USB controller, this is the way it's supposed to set itself up, so I don't think it's a problem.

Seems interesting though, normally nearly everything is being shared on IRQ11 on an ACPI system, but in my case not only is IRQ 11 not even being used, there is nothing being shared on any interupts except the USB controller.

[Avalanche]

Well I reinstalled windows, and reinstalled all the same software and drivers I was using before, and not a bit of trouble.

I'ts been running straight for 28 hours now and when I shut all the apps down it settles back down to 0% cpu usage.

Running my computer while I sleep isn't such a nice thing either, I live in a bachelor apartment, so basically my bed is across the room, and the fans kept me awake til all hours!

Anyway, all things seem to be going well, it seems to me though that all this trouble started when I first got this new hardware and I had trouble with the way McAfee VirusScan, I uninstalled it, and it helped, but the problem never went away.

Oh well, things seem fine now.