services.exe hogging CPU on wake

March 17, 2008

Hi all,

I've suddenly got a weird problem with a Sony Vaio laptop running XP

Home SP2. After waking from sleep or hibernation, the services.exe

program runs steadily whenever its Netgear PCMCIA NIC is inserted.

This does not happen following a cold start or reboot.

Although Process Explorer shows abnormal activity (12%) only for

services.exe with all other items in normal ranges, the drain on the

system seems to be much greater - it subjectively feels more like 90%

.... everything works but doing anything takes forever.

I'm sure there are no viruses or other malware - the problem abruptly

when the laptop's battery suddenly died.

Thinking it might have something to do with the NIC, I removed and

reinstalled the drivers. I tested the NIC in a different laptop and

it worked perfectly. I tried a different NIC (same model) and tried

it in both card slots. All the various permutations give me a working

network so I don't think either the NIC or the card slots were

physically damaged.

But still, services.exe acts up only when the NIC is inserted and only

following sleep or hibernation. After cold start or reboot,

services.exe behaves normally.

Process Explorer shows only the event log and plug-n-play services

attached to services.exe (but a whole bunch of threads). There is

nothing strange in the event log - it appears to show a normal wakeup

sequence every time. Could either of those services be screwing up?

If so, why only following sleep/hibernation and what can I do to fix

it?

Thanks,

George

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