Hello All, When I double click my dial up short cut on the desktop in Windows XP Pro, the window says "opening port" instead of Dialing xxx-xxxx. When I go into the Windows Task manager, I see a app called svchost.exe under the Image Name column, user name is system and it is using 99-100 of my CPU usage. Mem Usage is 17,572K. Then after a short time my system locks up. What's going on? How can I fix this problem? I assume that another app is doing something in the background and it is affecting my modem port or something. Thanks.

Steve, svchost.exe is spyware software. I don't know the specifics of your situation, but I have recently dealt with it and can email you a removal program I found on the internet. Nothing else, you can add it to your trial-n-error list. Let me know.... MATT.

Svchost is not spyware, Here's some info on it, and which services are safe to disable in XP. http://blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm

HA - good luck to you in your quest to remove that 'spyware' Matt... Try and know your facts before miseducating others though. scvhost = Service Host. XP home will usually run 4 of these and Pro will run 4 - 5. System critical low-level services are run in the enviroment created by the scvhost service.

Hello Everyone, I still am encountering my svchost.exe problem! Here is what I have done so far... I have scanned the XP hard drive with both Ad- aware 6.0 and Spybot- Search and Destroy. Found a few "low" concern items on the XP hard drive and got rid of them. I downloaded the pdf file from Black Viper on Windows XP Home and Pro Service Configuration and followed the "SAFE" settings that he recommends. After I did that, I rebooted the machine and doubled clicked the dial-up shortcut and I was able to dial up my ISP. I thought that I have solved my problems. I then logged off and restarted my machine and continued to test it again and the "opening port..." message returned again instead of the Dialing 123-4567 message. I then went into the Task Manager and watched the svchost.exe take over and then it switched to System and kept up the 99-100 CPU usage until it finally freezes. I'm not sure at what point in the process this happens, but the "opening port..." message will after a time, change to the Dialing 123-4567 message. I think that this is when the svchost.exe changes to the system image name. When I run the command and looked at the tasklist /svc and this is what my machine says after configuring (and I think before!) from Black Viper's article. Image Name PID Services svchost.exe 768 RpcSs svchost.exe 820 AudioSrv, Browser, CryptSvc, Dhcp, EventSystem, FastUserSwitchingCompatibility, helpsvc, lanmanserver, lanmanworkstation, Netman, Nla, RasMan, Schedule, SENS, SharedAccess, ShellHWDetection, srservice, TapiSrv, TermService, Themes, winmgmt, wuauserv svchost.exe 900 Dnscache What is the PID? The svchost.exe that is hogging all of my cpu is approximately 15,000 to 16,000 k, so I am assuming that the culprit is in PID 820 since it has so many items associated with it. Correct or not? I should give you a little background on what I did before this all started happening. I took my machine to my school and hooked it up on the network to get both the Win98SE and Win XP updates using the Windows Update function within the system. I read through the updates and downloaded what I thought I needed on both systems (critical and others). It seems to me that after I updated my Windows XP, that is when this "little" pain in the a_ _ issue started. I was wondering too, if a virus could cause this. I did also try to do some downloading from Kazaa that night as well (that's why I downloaded and installed Ad-aware after reading an article on all the spyware associated with this service). My set up at home consists of two computers networked through a 16 port hub. One computer is a Macintosh running OS X and the other of course is the computer that is causing me problems. Below are my PC's specs. I built this BTW. ECS K7S5A motherboard (Rev. 1.X) AMD Athlon XP 2100+ CPU (1.73 mhz) 256MB of Crucial DDR PC2100 RAM (soon to have 512MB) Dual booting with 2 hard drives 40GB HD running Win98SE (master-Formatted FAT32) 2 partitions C: OS and D: Data 30GB HD running WinXP Pro (Slave-Formatted NTFS) 2 partitions D: WinXP OS and F: Data 2 partitions from the primary HD show up as C: 98SE OS and E: Data CDROM CDRW FDD 350 Watt PSU Internal modem-56K Fax Modem with Intel Chipset Nexus Fan controller ATI Rage Fury Graphics card 32MB (soon to be upgraded) Bios updated to CheepoBios 1.12 beta (chb1129f.rom) no problems encountered Allied Telesyn CentreCOM 3016TR 16 hub Does anybody have any other ideas? I thought the Black Viper article would solve my problems! I didn't have this problem until I did the XP updates (coincidence or not?). I am considering reinstalling XP and not updating. What do you boys think? Thanks in advance for any info.

I fixed my problem... I decided to reinstall windows xp.