CPU is rapidly cycling from 0 to 100%

My CPU started fluctuating from 0 to 100% utilisation every 1-2 seconds. I made no change to the system.

I checked task manager, found that svchost.exe was using between 30 & 98%.

Therefore I stopped that process and the CPU stopped cycling.

Then I restarted and the process repeated, I again stopped svchost.exe and my CPU is running at about 7% now, but I know it will start again when I restart.

Having checked this forum I ran full McAfee virus scan and spyware scan and found nothing.

I have an AMD athlon XP1800+ 1.14ghz
512 MB ram
64 mb video card
Windows XP sp2

Can anyone suggest anything else.

Thanks

sounds like a virus, there is a thing in windows that uses this name, and there are also a few viruses that go under the same name, so run a virus scan and see what happens

BTW, you should get this moved to the windows help forum, it is not a hardware CPU question

Thanks for the suggestion - I did run a full scan which found nothing.

SPYWARE/ADWARE/MALWARE test would get next priority.
Also check more unnecessary services and disable them to help narrow down the problem. This link should help: http://decentdownloads.x-istence.co....php/t1106.html

Also, check out this article: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/se...n/ms04-011.mspx
It has important information about svchost and possible virus vulnerability related to it..

Thanks for the advice.

I ran all the scans possible - which reported nothing, but the problem is solved.

many thanks for your help

Regards

Huh.....Windows.

I also have svchost.exe which also uses up 40 -100% of my CPU, it should die down after about five minutes, try defragmenting your hard drive and it womnt take as long