is my processor on it's way out or...?

DamoKen

Hi All, just moved house last weekend and as such had to pack up my pc from the old place for the move. Had it packed fairly well (kept the original case box and polysterene molds), but seems a bit of a coincidence that I've only experienced problems since unpacking.

Ok so unpacked it last Friday morning, just had enough time to turn it on and
check I had speakers etc set up right and everything was powering up ok before visitors arrived. As I'd set it up in the kitchen was using it as a music centre for the bank holiday up until Sunday when the last guests left.

I'd noticed it had seemed a little sluggish over the weekend but didn't have time to sit down and have a proper look until Sunday evening and that's when I noticed my task manager was reporting 100% cpu usage by svchost.exe.

By the way, by Sunday when I booted up I got a message "your hardware configuration has changed considerably, so you are now required to reactivate this copy of Windows." or something like that which didn't bode well. Last major hardware change I carried out was to install an additional hdd back in October.

Ran antivir which was crawling so decided to reboot in safemode and run it there, which is where I should have run it to begin anyway.
Couldn't get into safe mode either through F8 or choosing diagnostic startup from msconfig which is a bit odd.

So I started wondering if maybe during the move something was damaged or shifted position slightly. First thought was the cpu fan & cooler so ran Systool and saw CPU temps were way over the line, starting from a cold boot the first readings were in the 80's moving up to 98 in 2 min before I shut down. This was the temp at idle.

Took the back off and noticed a lot of dust which had been on the cpu fan grill had fallen through the fan onto the covering underneath. As the fan still works and rpms looked ok only thing I could think of is the layer of dust that fell through, probably when I was moving it around has blocked the airflow.

Removed the fan and cooler anyway and replaced with a Zalman fan with copper heatsink. Temps immediately back down to mid 30's. Processor still at 100% usage though. Running ProcessExplorer showed one instance of svchost.exe was running the dnscache dll using over 50% of cpu resources so I stopped this service. ProcessExplorer was showing processor usage at 2/3% at this stage which I'd expect though taskmanager still showed 100%.

Last point I got to last night was to be able to run several different scans, trojanhunter, antivir and avast (all installed independent of each other and removed prior to next install). I picked up the latest copy of each in work yesterday as I've no connection at home at the moment.

One other thing I tried after reading some threads after googling was to kill the automatic update notify as this apparently can be the culprit at times. No joy there either.

If I hadn't moved I'd definitely think this is just a software problem, either virus or conflict of some sort. However as I hadn't installed anything new in the last few days up until the move or noticed a slowdown this would seem unlikely.

As the temp readings were so high, and I had the machine on 2 nights without noticing this, could the processor be knackered and on it's last legs?

Sorry for the really long mail, just wanted to give as much info as possible.

Cheers for any replies

GreenHell

Try patching your machine up www.windowsupdate.com - you should see an update that should solve high cpu utilisation.

DamoKen

hi Greenhell, any idea of the date on that patch? think I should be patched up until fairly recently, is this patch under Windows Security & Updates or elsewhere?

Khannie

I've had that trouble with svchost before. I either killed it, or rebooted, and it solved the problem. svchost acts as a messaging middleware app iirc.

DamoKen

yeah killed it a few times but no joy. Sometimes seems to reduce the load on the processor, sometimes not. The times I've killed it and no difference has been visible neither taskmanager nor ProcessExplorer have shown anything hogging resources and yet Taskmanager stills shows a 100% load even though ProcessExplorer doesn't. In fact all other processes shown in taskmanager are shown with 0% of the cpu before and after I kill svchost!
Then sometimes taskmanager is shown with 100%, or ProcessExplorer for a few seconds or so.

I'm at the stage where I don't place much faith in what task manager is displaying.

Rebooting and I'm just back at square 1.

GreenHell

As far am I'm aware there is an actual patch out there for it. I don't usually bother reading what patches I'm downloading from MS being the trusting individual I am.

On another note an OS refresh might be in order but that may not be the solution your looking for.

Cuddlesworth

Its possible that either, your hard-drive took a few knocks around and lost some sectors or your cpu at such unstable temps caused your data to corrupt. Might be worth your while running a chkdsk. Svchost handles Dll's, so if 1 had been corrupted it will in general go a bit nuts.

The other solution is a re-install, such a important process in Windows doesn't really get fixed quick.

papu

happened a friends of mine svchost went crazy and took over a windows reinstall will fix it , to make sure find an auld hdd install windows in that boot from it and see if you still having troubles

DamoKen

sorry for the late reply, don't have a broadband connection yet, have been trying to do a move request with my provider for the last 2 weeks and just got informed that it'll be another 3 so cancelled (but that's another story :rolleyes: ). Anyway ran every piece of anti spyware, virus checker that's available for free, on trial etc last night, found bits and pieces, nothing major though and still got the svchost going nuts with the dns dll.
Tried a sfc /scannow which crashed but didn't have time to investigate further. Have to retry it tonight in safemode as got that working again at least. I'll try chkdsk as well thanks.

One piece of heartening news is no 100% load or false readings in safe mode which I guess means the processor wasn't damaged by the high temps over the weekend as I feared. Looks like a simple case of corrupt or conflicting software somewhere.
Agree with you all on the Windows reinstall, last recourse and Windows cd is currently sitting atop my machine for tonights round of festivites .

Anymore suggestions or thoughts, glad to hear them.

Cheers guys