How to disable a service

Depending on what you need to do, disabling unnecessary services in Vista can help your system boot faster and run better.
True, but if you’re not very careful about which services you do disable (therefore preventing Vista from being able to use) you could have serious problems. It is always better to set services to Manual rather than Disabled as that way you can work out what activated them and decide if it safe to disable that whole area, rather than simply disabling those which don’t seem necessary and hoping Windows will still boot.

• click Start -> Run
• type services.msc in the search box
• right click and choose properties
• then select Disabled or Manual from the drop-down menu

Application Error, Windows crashes

One morning when restoring my pc from hibernate - I got this error: svchost.exe — application error the instruction at "0×745f2780" reference memory at "0×00000000". the memory could not be ‘read’. Once this error is closed you can’t start anything - and XP crashes when trying to shut down. Fortunately, if you don’t close any of the error messages down, windows still works.

• Go to the Start menu and right click My Computer
• Click Properties then the Automatic updates tab
• Choose Turn off automatic updates
• Reboot your computer
• Go back to Start menu and in all programs go to Windows update - you have to be connected to the internet.
• Manually update Windows
• Turn your automatic updates back on.

I have also had a number of people comment that the problem reappears after some time.  The recommended fix, if the problem reappears, is to turn off automatic updates, and just manually go to Windows Update periodically and update your machine. [read more ]

svchost.exe using 100% CPU

[XP only] As a computer technician, here is a problem I have been coming across more and more. About 30secs to 1 minute after booting into Windows the computer starts lagging heavily. When CTRL+ALT+DEL is pressed it shows that svchost.exe is using up maximum CPU resources and only occurs when Automatic Updates is enabled. Microsoft has recognized this problem and has released a patch. However, on all computers I have worked on with this problem, the Microsoft patches don’t fix the problem. This is a guide on how to fix this problem with svchost using maximum CPU.
Read more: How to stop svchost.exe using up 100% system resources (Windows XP Only)

The situation is familiar to countless Windows users: They’re in a groove at work, firing off e-mails, crafting documentation, and even blogging on their personal site during break time, when suddenly, something takes over 99 percent of the CPU, slowing it to a virtual standstill. A quick look at the invaluable Process Explorer (or the standard Windows Task Manager) indicates that a process called svchost.exe is using all that CPU. What’s more, there’s one main CPU offender. Multiple versions of svchost.exe are running in the background and hogging CPU cycles. What is it? Is it spyware? Hackers? Terrorists?
Read more:Stop svchost.exe from stealing CPU cycles

Useful links

• Description of Svchost.exe in Windows 2000
• A description of Svchost.exe in Windows XP Professional Edition
• What is svchost.exe? - Windows Vista Help
• Windows XP error: svchost.exe - Application Error
• FIX: When you run Windows Update to scan for updates that use Windows Installer, including Office updates, you may experience a memory leak, or you may receive an error message for the Svchost process
• Svchost and Svchost.exe - Crashes, CPU maximization, viruses, exploits and more
• How to Fix the Svchost.exe Application Error in Windows XP
• How to Solve the Svchost.Exe 100% Cpu Utilization Problem
• Identify Loaded SVCHOST.EXE in Windows Task List

Pages: 1 2