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Wed 2 Feb, 2005 08:28 am
My computer woes, with too many symptoms to list, either hinge on my reassembling the ribbon cables in the innards incorrectly when I had to change out the hard drive, or some other inexplicable problem originating about the same time which gives me the following message on start-up (and at other times): "Generic Host Process for Win32 Services has encountered a problem and needs to shut down. Please inform Microsoft of this problem." I did, repeatedly, with no response.
I am running on XP Professional Edition. I pulled off SP 2 (although I had not encountered any problems with it since downloading it last summer), and reinstalled from disk XP Pro SP 1. With the exception of 4 programs which Setup could not copy from the disk (even after cleaning and polishing the disk): migregdb.ex_,icwconn1.ex_,phone.ic_.filelist.xm_, and reinstalling the entire disk twice.
Could not find anything in the Microsoft Knowledge Base, although a Google search kind of indicated that the app (svchost.exe) could be used by bad guys and perhaps ought to be blocked. But it is a Windows program. ???????
Internet Explorer is screwed and OS is slow. Am about ready to go to Mozilla/Firefox.
Any ideas?
Thanks, Superwally. I will check out your links right now.
sumac
I am confused now.
The first link, from Microsoft, indicates that it is a valid program.
The second link went nowhere.
The third link implies that it is placed there by a worm. But it is not on my startup, according to msconfig.
Also appears to be of relevance only to XP Professional edition.
Soory to confuse you. I was confused when I first looked in to this.
Basically, SVCHOST.EXE is essential to the running of your system, and there will usually be lots of instances of it running at once when you look in your Task Manager(accessible by right clicking on the task bar).
However, the SVCHOST.EXE should never be present in your startup list(accessible by typing msconfig at the run prompt).
The type of SVCHOST.EXE that is placed there by a worm will show up on your startup as per msconfig.
In short, if SVCHOST.EXE is on your startup list, then it may be a dodgy one so get rid of it. But don't worry about any that are on your Task Manager.
Hope this is a little less confusing.
No svchost.exe on startup through msconfig.
My concern is that the good svchosts have come corrupted given the incessant problems and error messages that the Generic Host Process for Win32 Services has encountered a proplem and needs to shut down.
Think I will just wipe, reformat, and do a clean install all over again.
I'm no expert, so there's a limit to what advice I can give.
I've just entered "Generic Host Process for Win32 Services errors" into google and started reading through some of the links. It all seems to be very complex.
There are possibilities of a trojan or worm, but I can find nothing conclusive.
I personally have the following protective programs running :- Ad-Aware SE, Spybot S&D, Spywareblaster, Spywareguard, ZoneAlarm, Norton Antivirus 2005, CWShredder, and possibly a couple of others I can't remember.
I have found that with all these programs, my system has remained quite clean, but I have to run them every couple of weeks or so.
Sorry if my comments haven't helped. There seem to be a lot of people on various forums having similar problems with no idea of a solution.
Good luck, and if I figure out any other Ideas I'll post them here.
Thanks, Wally.
I too have found it to be not a simple issue/
I alslo run Norton Anti-virus, Spyware Doctor, Zone Alarm, and double checked on Micro Trend online website. Nothing.
Tried to download CWShredder, but it was unsuccessful/ That problem, with other download and installations, were the last straw. Have to start all over again, I fear.
the file is a service of windows not a program that starts up in the normal way.
Under the run command type services.msc and you will see all the background services that are available and the ones that are running in the background.Normally that program processes the applications thru the host computer for internet acess for internet acess and is a harmless entity.
Their are viruses that hide themselves by trying to name their files after services to fool the user into thinking its a normal function of the system.
Yes, that is true. But I solved the problem, finally, by doing a clean install and that error message has not appeared again. So this episode is over.
Thanks, again, everyone, for your input.
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