svchost.exe

[chainsawred]

Whenever I connect to the internet, svchost.exe starts eating up all my processing power. I found this link on google... http://www.grtg.org/stuff/computers/...vchost_exe.php

But when I go to the command prompt and type in "tasklist/svc" it tells me that "tasklist is not recognized as internal or external command". (I'm running Windows XP Home, btw.) Is there some reason why this command won't work on my computer? I've had this computer for only 2 months, and I've already reinstalled once... Anybody got any advice to point me towards figuring this out?

Oh yeah, I've done a virus scan. Also I tried ending the process in Task Manager, but I couldn't access any web pages afterwards. And as soon as I disconnect, everything goes back to normal. I'm pretty sure its just some program trying to start and failing for some reason. What troubles me is that I can't get the "tasklist" command to work so I can find out WHICH program!

[charliex]

svchost is a critical system application, it spawns a lot of other processes, looks after various parts of windows, its harder to poinpoint exactly which process it spawned thats sucking up time.
its similar to unix inetd in some ways.

tasklist maybe a pro only command, and all it will tell you is the list of process it spawned,

on my xp pro its an internal cmd command

[Nizzle]

Download and use this nifty program (Process Explorer) to get a better picture of what is consuming resources:

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

It's like UNIX lsof, ldd and ps all wrapped into one, and beats the snot out of the generic "Task Manager."

[kofspades]

sounds like the MSBlast virus. Go to microsoft.com and download the patch.

[darkure]

Originally posted by kofspades
sounds like the MSBlast virus. Go to microsoft.com and download the patch.

If this is the case, downloading the patch won't do squat to fix the current problem. You need to download the Virus fix tool from a place like Symantec (Norton) in order to get rid of the virus. You can do it manually to as per the instructions on their site but the tool is much easier. Without doing this the patch only prevents future exploitation of the RPC hole and does nothing to resolve the current problem, if it happens to actually be a the Blaster virus.