Laptop problem

[Dan]

Hi,

My partner has a problem with her laptop. I am slightly stumped by it and thought I'd ask for advice.

It is Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Pro Laptop about 5 years old. Windows XP service pack 3

The problem is this when I open up windows task manager 'services.exe' is running at about 25,000k and also taking cpu every now and again. I am not sure what could be causing this. I've got AVG and this hasn't suggested any viruses etc

Advice appreciated.

[Hawk]

Check out this link. http://www.neuber.com/taskmanager/proce ... s.exe.html

services.exe should be in the C:\Windows\System32 directory, or possibly C\WINDOWS\$NTServicePack. If you do a search for services.exe on your computer and you find it anywhere else, it could possibly be a virus or other malware.

[arizonachris]

Hi, Dan. Several things to try. First, run CCleaner: http://www.piriform.com/CCLEANER Run the normal cleaner, then the Registry cleaner (make sure to backup the Registry first)
Now, run Malwarebytes: http://shop.malwarebytes.org/lpa/342/3/ ... QgodGx3RPQ The Free version works just fine.

Could also just be time to either do a repair of XP, or reinstall. XP (or any Windows O/S) tends to get bogged down after a few years use with a lot of crap. Look in Add and Remove Programs, see what you can get rid of, do a disk cleanup. How much free hard drive space is there?

[Hawk]

Another link you might want to check out is Black Viper. I mention this since your issue seems to be with services.
This link will show all the default services that run in XP and what you can possibly disable, as well as other information about XP that you may find useful.

[arizonachris]

Just for fun, I checked my services.exe, it's using 0 CPU and 5,848k memory. But I only have Firefox and Folding @ Home running. (sheesh, 11 "svchost.exe's"? WTF)

[Dan]

You'll have to be patient with me as I am not the most technically savvy person in the world :)

To search for services.exe is it just a case of using search (on the start menu) and then typing services.exe and all files/folders?

Doing this gives me services.exe in c:\WINDOWS\system32 and also c:\WINDOWS\ServicePackFiles\i386

Is this correct or is the one in ServicePackFiles a virus?

How do I go about backing up my registry?

I've done things like disk clean up, defrag etc, there is not a huge amount of hard drive left 17.9gb out of 55gb. This is in part because my partner is very bad at getting rid of things despite me telling her that this is very likely to be part of her problem.

[Hawk]

To search for services.exe is it just a case of using search (on the start menu) and then typing services.exe and all files/folders?

That is correct.

Doing this gives me services.exe in c:\WINDOWS\system32 and also c:\WINDOWS\ServicePackFiles\i386

Both of those should be OK. The c:\WINDOWS\ServicePackFiles\i386 directory is installed by default with XP SP2, but even though you've updated to SP3 I wouldn't delete anything in that directory.

How do I go about backing up my registry?

If you run the CCleaner registry cleaner, you'll be given the option to create a back up of the registry after it finishes the search and before it does the cleaning.
CCleaner will also clean up a lot more stuff than the default disk clean up will or even can. You'll probably be surprised at what CCleaner finds, even with the default settings, which I would recommend for someone with your experience.

Also, based on your experience, please ignore my suggestion to visit the Black Viper site, unless you just want to read. Unless you completely understand what is being said at that site, I wouldn't recommend attempting a lot of what is suggested there. It's not really intended for the novice.

[Dan]

Hi,

To report back. I ran ccleaner and malawarebytes. I ran a clean disk and disk defrag. I also removed redundant programs. BUT Services is still using up 80% CPU for the first 5 or so minutes of any boot up (not just the first one of the day). svchost/wuauclt also uses a ton of CPU and memory.

I wonder if it is an issue with a windows update that it is looking for an update which hasn't been installed properly previously (I've had a similar problem on another laptop in the past) but that was just svchost/wuauclt spending 20 minutes going insane on the first boot up of the day.

One other thing - I've got firefox 7.0.1 and all the recent versions on this laptop have really hated gmail and facebook. It's an XP machine.

Any ideas?

[Hawk]

According to this link http://www.neuber.com/taskmanager/proce ... t.exe.html , wuauclt (Windows Update Agent) is Windows Update and the reason it may be using so much processor and memory on boot up could be your Internet connection not allowing a good, fast connection since Windows Update is waiting to hear back from the Microsoft site.

wuauclt.exe should be found in C:\Windows\System32 and apparently no where else.

[Dan]

Ironically, the connection here in Romania is much better than my connection back in the UK. Here is is 450kbs.

[arizonachris]

Dan, I have an old Alienware Area 51 laptop (Pentium 4 3.2Ghz, 4Gb RAM, ATI 9300 graphics card) this old POS can take 10 minutes until the hard drive settles down. Then I have to mess with network settings to get it to see my net/ internet. Amazing that this junk was over $2,000 in it's day and now won't even play Net Flix, let alone RW. You seem to have done all the optimizing you can, now it's just what it is. 5 years old and basically a dinosaur in this day and age.