Is reformatting my OS the only option left now?

Question

Some time back i had asked a question here regarding the irritating problem with svchost on Windows 7.

"For the last month or so i am seeing that my Core i5 processor suddenly goes schizophrenic and act like a Pentium II processor by getting stuck for 10-15 seconds. During that time eveything on the system goes into slow motion mode while my speakers get techno, taking a long time to say a single word. At the time i thought it was a virus so i scanned my system using Norton, AVG and Avast but without any problem.

One day i opened up my Task Manager and i saw a long list of svchost.exe processes taking over 70% of CPU usage. Currently there are over 13 such processes opened and a couple of them using 25-30% of my CPU. This happens every five or six minutes and i am getting irritated by this. I tried to delete the processes but there were some problems and i had to restart my system. Is there anyway that i can stop this from happening?"

The lone answer that i got suggests viruses...i downloaded avast, norton, kaspersky and microsoft scanner without any success (ie there were no viruses reported) i scanned my registry with 3 different scanners...scanned with spybot...again without any success...so is reformatting my OS the only option left now? Can anyone help me out with this problem?

Answer 1

First, terminology, you reformat a drive, you reinstall an operating system.



Okay, open a command prompt and type "Tasklist /SVC".

This will list all the processes running under svchost. If you see stuff that you know you are not using, shut them down (and either switch them to manual or disable) from Administrative Tools - Services.



Reboot.

Answer 2

1. Download ComboFix from http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/combofix/how-to-use-combofix

2. Restart your PC in Safe Mode and run ComboFix.

3. ComboFix will then scan your computer and will remove some of the worst infections that most antivirus software fails to remove (including the ones you said you used already).

Answer 3

Re-format the OS???

You could try formatting the hard drive and re-installing the OS.

Answer 4

perhaps there may be a hardware trouble with your os.isn't that better going to a technician before formatting?.

Answer 5

Thats what i would have done if i had the same problem....:(