SVCHOST eating up CPU capacity

The worst is when it isn't the CPU, but something I/O related like some process reading/writing on the hard disk. This will slow everything down.

Usually the big culprits:

1: The Window search/index service. On Vista, I disable it. Same with XP. Windows 7 and newer, it seems to be better behaved.

2: An AV utility. Since virtually all of them are junk, I just use MSE and Malwarebytes (Malwarebytes can block by IP address, so even 0-days are locked out.) MSE is lightweight. Other brands, can chew CPU and disk, paralyzing even a high end system.

3: AMD/ATI's desktop utility. For some reason, these can memory leak into the gigabyte range (which pushes out all your other programs, forcing your machine to swap.)

4: A backup utility like Mozy, Acronis, or the like.

Windows XP3 update engine is known to be buggy. So not surprising an issue can crop up. Unfortunately, with XP shortly phasing out support, MS apparently has no plans on releasing additional fixes for any of these glitches.

We still have two XP machines and the only time I see high CPU usage is when Windows gets updates which is not too often. I just had six updates last week however. I just leave it alone and let it do its thing and then the problem goes away. The only issue I have with XP machines is IE 8 running slowly so I use Chrome and that solves that issue.

Dick

1492 wrote:
Windows XP3 update engine is known to be buggy. So not surprising an issue can crop up. Unfortunately, with XP shortly phasing out support, MS apparently has no plans on releasing additional fixes for any of these glitches.

I remember a utility that used to be out which consolidated every single fix since service pack 3 into one large executable. That way, when installing XP new, it was just installing a CD with service pack 3, then clicking on the fix, and having that toss everything else on.

In fact, one could even slipstream every single patch, so a reinstall would not just give you SP3, but every single patch since then, no multiple restarts, no installing hundreds of fixes. However, I forgot the utility, and I'm leery of just using anything out there on Google for obvious reasons.

XP is nice. I can run it in a virtual machine with 512 megs of RAM, then run Chrome under sandboxie. This way, if it does get hit by malware, if dumping the sandbox doesn't work, dumping the VM to a known good snapshot almost certainly will. Each month, I roll back to a previous snapshot anyway for patching. However, as a "main" OS, I'd run a newer version of Windows, just because XP is built around security issues from 2001, while Windows Server 2012 R2 is built around issues from 2013.