windows 7 - svchost.exe using lots of memory slowing my PC down

On my Windows 7 32-bit. svchost.exe is using lots of Memory and slowing my PC down big time.

I already have auto update turned off and it is on manual mode.

How can I fix this problem?
Thanks

Answer

There's no way for us to know what is causing a svchost.exe high CPU usage problem on any given machine because:

svchost.exe is a host process that contains running DLLs as services in Windows XP and beyond. At any given time, there are multiple services running inside svchost.exe. You could kill the process, but you would never be able to tell which service is causing the problem, because you would be killing all of them.

To determine which one is causing high CPU usage, you can try a few methods:

• Open Task Manager, right-click the svchost.exe that is causing problems, then click the last option - "Go to Services"

  
  

  

  
  

  You will get a list of all the services that are running in that particular svchost.

  
  

  




• You can also use Process Explorer to view which services are running in a particular svchost instance:

  
  

  

  
  

  Source

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While a virus could certainly cause this problem, it's not any more likely than just a poorly written software program hogging resources, or a poor choice of antivirus suite.