svchost errors...

[purr]

I've been getting a lot of these - primarily with Photoshop and my HP printer. Now, today, it just started doing it when I go to browse my hard drive. Heres the latest one I get:



I also get it when I open up paint.

ALSO...

I get it on internet explorer, and when I type in a website address thats not already in the drop down menu, it takes FOREVER for it to go to the site - like it sits there and goes DURRRRR and then it'll load.

Any ideas???

Thanks :)

[bemildred]

1. It appears to be a null pointer dereference, a bug in the program.

You might want to make sure that you have the correct and patched up version of the program (svchost.exe). After that, there are many things that could be wrong, and perhaps wiser heads than I will comment.

[purr]

2. Where do I get svchost.exe?

Its doing it on more than one program or I would've re-installed the one. Thanks for the reply :)

[bemildred]

3. svchost.exe is part of WinXP.

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=314056

It's sort of an intermediate program that runs other programs for you. It could have been damaged. You could have some sort of infection related to it. It could be something else, but the error you put up, from a programming point of view, is a bug, an error in the coding, and if the code allows null pointer dereferences, it quite likely allows buffer overruns too, which would be a large security hole.

If you had another XP box handy, you could compare size, date and contents of the program on the two machines.

I don't have an XP box handy, so I can't help you much with all that.

[RoyGBiv]

4. Also ...

Other than what bemildred said, svchost.exe is an essential element in the operating system that allows programs based on .dll libraries to function. It is bound to countless OS functions as well. (Well, you could count them, but it'd take too long.) In my experience, errors with svchost.exe are related either to a virus infection or a corrupted .dll it references or both. If it were one program, my first suspicion would be a bad .dll with that program, and the potential fix would be re-installing it. If it is more than one program, this still could be the problem if all those programs are referencing the same .dll. However, in this case, those programs might be using a .dll that is a part of the OS, and there's not an easy, always-works fix for that other than re-installing the OS. The corruption of the .dll itself could be caused by a bad sector on a hard drive, which might indicate impending failure of the drive.

Less likely, but still possible, is the chance that this is due to a bad memory stick with the software attempting to write to a memory address that returns corrupted data, indicating a memory write failure. That would seem to fit with your error, but the way Windoze reports errors, the simplest, most obvious explanation isn't always or even usually the correct one.

First, do a CTL-ALT-DEL and look at the task list while one of the problem programs is running. You'll see several instances of svchost.exe in the task list. Check the path to each of these instances. If you're running Windows XP, 2000, or 2003, the path should be:

C:\Windows\System32\Svchost.exe

The drive letter could be different if you have the OS installed on a different drive than C:\. Otherwise, the path should be exactly that, with no variation. Make sure the spelling is precise. A common avenue for trojans and viri is a mis-spelling of svchost.exe to something like scvhost.exe or an altered path, etc.

If you happen to be running Windows NT, the path will be:

C:\WinNT\System32\Svchost.exe

If it is something else, you have a virus.

I would immediately run a virus scan, using something other than Norton with an updated virus definitions list. Also do a scandisk to check the integrity of your hard drive. If those come up clean, and you're certain you can trust your anti-virus software, start checking the memory. (If you get to this point, let us know, and I can look up the URL for memtest.) If *that* is clean, it could be a random glitch that hosed one or more .dll files, but I'd still suspect a problem with the hard drive of some sort.

[bemildred]

5. Thank you.

I didn't want to freak anybody out by going on about virii and stuff, lord know there is enough FUD out there on the web already.

[RoyGBiv]

6. Yeah ...

I know what you mean.

My first thought with things like this usually doesn't involve a virus, and if it had been one program only causing this, it wouldn't have been my third or fourth thought. By coincidence, the last computer I cleaned was getting errors like this, but it was one program, and the root cause was a bad drive that was in the process of what I like to call "eating itself." In this case, however, it's a definite concern.