Every so often, services.exe eats 99% CPU. It can be while playing a game online, watching a video, or just surfing the internet. I cannot close the process because it is a system process, and McAffe turns up no virii. I also scanned with the latest Ad-aware definitions, and that turned up nothing as well. It slows my computer to a crawl, and causes my internet wireless connection to go offline while it's doing so. Any help would be appreciated.

Hello
This must be a factor of some actual "services" that there are included with windoze. For example printing - if you do not have a printer - why have it running? May be there is a misfit with your wireless connection - it is in services too, along with regular ethernet.

To view and change/remove services
click Start, point to Settings, and then click Control Panel. Double-click Administrative Tools, and then double-click Services.
There you'll see all services running and avaliable to load at any time. REmove or disable a few you feel are safe to do so.

See if that helps, otherwise keep us posted

Andrew-
I have a similar situation- Same sys W2K, XP2400, and McAffee....

One thing i have noticed: My cable modem is having issues, and so I have no internet at home right now (Doing this from work, actually)- My computer refused to boot in a timely manner (Over 15 minutes!!!!) I tried disabling MANY programs that could ahave effected it to no avail. (McAffe, among others)

I've unplugged my router too, and the 'Network cable unplugged icon' showed up. IE- NO NETWORK OR INTERNET. Amazingly enough, the computer now runs fine! I've done some digging and I've seen this reported elsewhere as a Winsock error ( http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=997024&page=1 ) and plan on trying it when I get a new modem and can download a 'fix'! I think the communication from the OS to the network/internet is causing the odd spiking in CPU.