Damned Windows Services

Thanks to Windows my 1.8Ghz AMD Athlon is strugling to load Firefox or for that matter notepad, the reason... One of the windows services is acting up and using all the available system resources meaning all other applications have to wait. It took 15 minutes to load Firefox and a further 20 to get here.

It first happened when iTunes crashed this morning but even though I've reset it doesn't stop using up CPU, anyideas as to what service it is and whether I can shut it down.

The process name is: Service.exe and I can't close it using task manager.

#119352

have you rebooted? or did you just close 1 app (itunes) and expect that to fix everything?

did you load task manager, and see what exectuable is using all the resources.

did you search google for the name of the .exe to see what service it was?

did you go into your services and disable that service?

did you post to a msg board looking for REAL help?

#119396

There are also viruses out that that create bogus services on your system.

Some of them being DLLHOST.EXE and SERVICES.EXE.

They look legit, but are not.

The real services.exe cannot be killed as it is the Event Log service.

"Enables event log messages issued by Windows-based programs and components to be viewed in Event Viewer. This service cannot be stopped."

#119398

I say reformat if you can. You should realy do it every couple months imho, as windows seems to get screier and screier over time. It also makes 100% shure that windows is free of viruses and whatnot. Many people would argue that reformating is jsut for lazy unknoalgable people, and i 100% agree with them :canadian:

#119402

As much as reformating represents a nightmare, specially in this community (hacked a bit of dlls and such), i agree with lostspyder, i used to do it every 3-4 months... reformat... reapply mods... get on with life again hehe...

#119405

Give us a view of your services in the Admin section! This would give us an idea as to what you do not need going

Or you can take a look at Black viper's site on services

#119428

i agree with you spyder on some points. User's who install lots of stupid sh¡t slow windows down to a grinding hault over time. If you don't regularly install new stuff, and don't use IE (ah la activeX) you can run it for years without problems.

It's when you get 3rd party programs giving you dll hell, and have 30 things added to your startup, and too ignorant to know how to remove them, that things start getting sh¡tted out.

I'm flying down to NC in a month to setup my parents soon-to-be-bought PC. I'm gonna set them up with FireFox, and tell them to only use IE if they REALLY need to get to something and it just flat wont work in FireFox. I'm almost considering setting them as a 'Guest'. As all they will do with it is surf the net, send email, play solitaire.

now that i think about it, I may make them use ThunderBird too, as to avoid them getting h4x0r3d through Outlook.

ok i'm done off topic ranting.

#119432

I think I posted about this proggie once before... anyway, grab a free copy of process explorer from the nice guys at SysInternals, run it to see who is the bastard process eating up your resources, from within Process Explorer check its properties and it will tell you how it was launched (startup parameters, directory, and such -- this is especially useful for services that have a common stub); find the culprit, identify it, and decide whether it deserves to live.

#119569

It's a virus.

Service - service.exe - Process Information

Process File: service or service.exe

Process Name: Service

Description: Added to the system as a result of the Worm.Win32.Raleka virus.

Company: N/A

System Process: No

Security Risk ( Virus/Trojan/Worm/Adware/Spyware ): Yes

Common Errors: N/A

I suggest you to try use some removal tool, I'm sure there's one.

#119582

nice site, but gill, why u change your avator? Your new one makes no sense, and i liked ur old one. :lol:

#119587

a reformat might be a too radical for such a problem.

scan for viruses and spyware first, then disable unnecessary services using the black viper guide, defrag, etc.

#119598

Originally posted by Acaeris@Feb 25 2004, 02:05 PM
It took 15 minutes to load Firefox and a further 20 to get here.

wow... <1 min silence> :blink: wow...

first of all you cant kill that service. may be (like everyones said) check for virus/backdoors/spyware/etc before do a format/reinstall.

But that looks like you have the whole memory filled... may be there is something running in background eating cpu/memory and you dont notice about that until services crash. try to replace the original services and then looks what happend.

#119645

Originally posted by Flarex@Feb 25 2004, 04:13 PM
nice site, but gill, why u change your avator? Your new one makes no sense, and i liked ur old one.

I changed it because I found a couple of weird/interesting pics by a very talented photographer (Charlie White)

check it out:

"Joshua"

From his book@amazon

#119647

Originally posted by LoofyGun@Feb 25 2004, 03:10 PM
It's a virus.
Service - service.exe - Process Information
Process File: service or service.exe
Process Name: Service
Description: Added to the system as a result of the Worm.Win32.Raleka virus.
Company: N/A
System Process: No
Security Risk ( Virus/Trojan/Worm/Adware/Spyware ): Yes
Common Errors: N/A
I suggest you to try use some removal tool, I'm sure there's one.

Services.exe is not a virus.

It really does exist.

What you need to look for is how many instances of services.exe you are running.

There should only be 1.

I just ran into a friends PC that had 2 instances of winlogon.exe running.

One was running as SYSTEM, and the other under his ID.

It had insterted itself to start automaticaly in the registry.

Whacked the reg entry, killed the process, deleted file, rebooted again and all better.

The one in system32 is legit. the one in the windows or winnt directory is a virus.

Same applies for services.exe. The one in system32 directory is legit.

Also, if it's XP, look to see what user ID services.exe process is running as.

If it's running as anything other than SYSTEM, it's a virus.

#120080

Originally posted by rjohnstone@Feb 26 2004, 02:29 PM
Services.exe is not a virus.

It really does exist.

What you need to look for is how many instances of services.exe you are running.

There should only be 1.

I just ran into a friends PC that had 2 instances of winlogon.exe running.

One was running as SYSTEM, and the other under his ID.

It had insterted itself to start automaticaly in the registry.

Whacked the reg entry, killed the process, deleted file, rebooted again and all better.

The one in system32 is legit. the one in the windows or winnt directory is a virus.

Same applies for services.exe. The one in system32 directory is legit.

Also, if it's XP, look to see what user ID services.exe process is running as.

If it's running as anything other than SYSTEM, it's a virus.

services.exe is legit, but service.exe (no "s") is a virus. sneaky.

#120105

Sneaky indeed... Even I missed the spelling omition.

#120168

No, it's ok now.

The services.exe was legit, it wasn't a virus, it didn't need a reinstall. I'd accidentally changed a setting in the registry and windows was using my system shortcuts folder as the startup folder. i.e. it was loading stuff like all the control panel dialogs and regedit etc. in the background, all i needed to do was alt-tab and cancel them.

I wont make that mistake again. This time, i'll edit the right registry setting.

#120676