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Svchost and Svchost.exe - Crashs, CPU maximization, viruses, exploits and more.

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Dear Leo,
I had the same problem on my computer ie. svchost error..I searched on the net and came upon your forum..I saw on reading various responses that this is caused due to vulnerabilites in windows itself through which viruses can enter....So heres what i did....
1] Installed Windows2000-KB823980-x86-ENU.exe Update... Immediately..
Just installing this solved 90% of the problem..
2] Installed Firewall NORTON INTERNET SECURITY..
3] Installed all the critical updates from the microsoft website http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/
I am just amazed that how vulnerable my system was.I had to install 17 Critical updates for my Win2k SP4..each update says of a possible attack..
so the best precaution is to install all the updates..
4] Installed F-PROT antivirus for DOS ..It has all latest virus defnitions but runs in dos mode.So when system starts up Press F8 and select dos mode and run the program.Advantage here is that as most people expirence that most AV programs for windows fail to detect viruses of this nature in windows environment.tHis dos version does detect viruses like MsBlast,Sasser etc.. So new viruses are unable to touch this..
http://www.f-prot.com/download/home_user/download_fpdos.html for the main program....http://www.f-prot.com/cgi-bin/get_randomly?fp-def for latest virus definitions...and ..http://www.f-prot.com/cgi-bin/get_randomly?macrdef2 for macro virus definitions...Unzip all the three files in the same directory say c:\FP\ and run the program in dos mode.... If there is a virus it will detect it..
Doing the above Solved my Problem completely and I had no system crash till now..Thats 2 days and wow!! my system speed has improved..
So I hope my post will help other people with this problem..... Cheers :)

Posted by: Gaurav Tyagi at June 2, 2004 2:27 AM

I would like to say here that I was not able to update windows before installing
Windows2000-KB823980-x86-ENU.exe .It always gave some errors... But after installing this update things went smoothly...
Happy Computing

Posted by: Gaurav Tyagi at June 2, 2004 2:38 AM

Thanks for your report, Gaurav. The DOS mode FProt technique is particularly useful.

Posted by: Leo at June 2, 2004 8:31 AM

Leo, help , i have svchost.exe error, and everytime i connect to internet , my modem is going wild, it sends data (and receivs but less) constantly , even if i don't ask him to do so ( i even don't start mirc) .... I have win 2000, service pack 3 , avast antivirus with all updates...... He had found several viruses (trojans) and removed all of them.... I have even tried to sfc /scannow but it didn't help. I would be thankfull if you solve this puzzle.... Please contact me on my e-mail rdx@net.hr so i can see if you wrote something...

Thx

Posted by: Lega at June 3, 2004 4:30 PM

The article you just commented on has my recommended approach.

Posted by: Leo at June 3, 2004 4:34 PM

Hi Leo,
er.. I forgot to mention that one should go into dos mode from a dos bootable floppy.. or much better win98 startup diskette...we dont want the win2000 os to startup even a bit before virus scanning so...
Thankx

Posted by: Gaurav Tyagi at June 7, 2004 10:11 PM

For a while now I've been having problems with IE - I can't open two IE windows at once without it crashing and there's a lot of slowdown even with one window open. I've noticed an extra copy of svchost.exe using up about 95% of my cpu, and if I try and end the process I get the one minute shutdown. Are my Internet Explorer problems connected to svchost?

I've scanned for both spyware and viruses (using AdAware and Norton AntiVirus respectively) and installed all avaliable updates from Microsoft.

Thanks for any help.

Posted by: Steph Rose at June 10, 2004 8:50 AM

My Windows 2003 server is giving a svchost.exe application error

Posted by: aziz at June 10, 2004 11:33 AM

Steph: killing svchost is obviously the wrong thing to do. As the article outlines, there are supposed to be multiple copies running. It does sound like you may be infected. Have you followed the article's instructions?

Posted by: Leo at June 10, 2004 3:16 PM

Aziz: same question: have you followed the article's instructions?

Posted by: Leo at June 10, 2004 3:17 PM
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