Since last week I was running into some problems on my system. It seemed to freeze for a while, and then return, with no apparent reason. Those hangs used to last for one minute, or so. It wasn't like that before: during six months I used this computer without any problems. Those hangs were like when you have a very cpu-intensive job running, and the computer slows down for other commands, if you get my meaning. First attempts to discover what was going on, I tried to scandisk it, defragment, etc... Updated norton, and found no virus. After messing around with it, I listed the running processes during one of these freezes. I found out that services.exe and vcool.exe (my temp monitoring prog) were consuming cpu. And I also saw that vcool was one of the major cpu-consumers, togheter with services.exe and, obviously, the idle system loop. I didn't do anything with these infos at that moment. After a few reboots, I discovered that under win2000, when I tried to play an mp3, the machine would reboot! Again, and again, the machine rebooted. I couldn't be able to play no mp3 and no other clips or video formats with any kind of audio. So, I opened the computer and removed the modem and the soudblaster. Rebooted, and it was quite better, tough not free from the frezzings. Annoying! I also noticed that my athlon would run a bit cooler without the soundblaster (~3 or 4 C). As I couldn't prevent the freezings, I again listed the processes and kept them listed for an hour or more. That's when I tried to disable vcool's settings. With vcool's idle loop enabled, task manager reports 100% cpu usage all the time (yes, all the time with no rest). Disabling vcool's idle loop was enough for cpu usage to immediately drop to 0 ~4% average. I also disabled north bridge cool bit, but I couldn't find out if there where any difference. Vcool reports an average of 33 C cpu and 30 C motherboard with idle loop and cool bit set (and 100% cpu usage, according to task manager). Without these features, it raises to 41 C and 30 C. How could this be possible? Am I missing something? What can I do to work this around? Have you people ever had such a problem? My system is still freezing!

I don't have an answer for you, but I found your entry while looking for information on services.exe myself ... because I am experiencing similar "freezes" over the past couple days. CPU Time is reporting an inordinate amount to services.exe (one-fourth of the idle process time - wow!).

I am having the same problem -- both services.exe and lsass.exe (LSA shell) are using up CPU time and constantly doing file i/o. This happened a few days ago and the system has been slow since -- it feels like a worm or virus.

For me it turns out the problem was the W32/Nimda virus. I have Mcafee installed, but I wasn't being vigilant about running scans. When I finally did, it caught the virus and disinfected 815 files. It infiltrated via email, html, and executable routes. I think finally it had so many processes running in parallel using LSA Shell and services.exe, probing the internet for other weak computers, that it swamped the system. I am not sure if it's totally gone, but I am fairly confident it was the main cause of the disk churning system slowdown. So I would suggest running a comprehensive virus scan and see if you are ill.

hi, pals. I´m passing thru a really annoying situation. After a hang in my system, wich took out about 10 keys from the RUN subkey on the register, i started to think that i could be a virus victim. Although running Norton Internet Security and Norton Antivirus and allways updating them, i believe that this virus has installed as a win2k service, running very low and deactivating my antivirus and my firewall. After removing NIS and NAV with a Symantec´s utility, i´ve reinstalled them and updated. After that, NIS report me an alert to SERVICES.ESE who was trying to establish a connection using UDP. I´ve blocked the app and i´m still trying to find wherever this virus can be. If you know the proccess, access the list of services at http://www.maximega.com.br/sup/reg_services_exe.gif and tell me something. I´m sending this message to symantec too. regards and tks for all Selbach