Unstable? & svchost

I built a pc for a m8, and he reports it runs slow during games and process svchost uses 90% CPU after 20 mins or so.

Asus K8V-SE Deluxe S754 VIA k8t800 ATX Sound Gig lAN Firewire USB 2.0 FSB 800 Retail Box
Coolermaster Athlon 64 Cooler upto AMD3700 (only) Skt754
Asus ATI Radeon AX800PRO TVD 256MB DDR3, VIVO, TV-Out, DVI INC High Quality Webcam & Games Bundle Retail Box
AMD (Newcastle) Athlon 64bit 3400+ 754pin/512kb L2cache Retail
Antec TRUE430PGB True Power 430W ATX Power Supply
Ebuyer 512 DDR400 PC3200 Extra Value Ram

The HDD was a transplant from his old pc, so I didn't do a fresh install of the OS and have no idea yet if he has the latest security patches and service packs. Any ideas what to look for next? any benchmark pgms worth running?

Cheers
Rob

Maybe its because the old drivers wern't wiped from the disk properly

I would do a fresh install

Yep, an os reinstall should solve your problems.

Just out of interest when you've spent so much on the cpu/mobo/gfx why are you using such cheap/crap ram ?

m8, you don't wanna know......The guy originally wanted XP & Office XP as well all for £500. He said it was a challenge, to me it was a pain in the ......so costs were cut.

Thanks guys.
Rob

Re-install windows and all...

svchost is normally the executable which runs some of WinXP services. However its quite easy if infected by a worm/virus/trojan for this to hog a lot of CPU time. Have you run the usual anti-spyware programs. It hes patched up them there might be a hardware/driver problem but you're being quite specific about 20m

I think the only way to sort this is to reinstall Windows tbh...Ive tried removing all my drivers/ tried different drivers etc but one svchost uses 100% cpu time at random and its not a virus, it's a legit svchost.

Bloody annoying cos I cant let me CPU goto 100% load for more than a few mins cos my PSU is going to go bang.

If I move the mouse it will stop using all the CPU though, very strange..never happens when the PC is in use only when its not doing anything, can tell when the PSU fan speeds up.

If he is using Windows 2000 without a firewall, this can lead to svchost errors - this is how the blasterworm affects windows 2000 - unlike winxp where you got the shutdown countdown dialogue.

Yeah that's true...win 2k puts rpc service by default to take no action or restart the service? cant remember now but it isnt restart the pc....unlike xp that puts it to automatically restart on all 3..if it gets terminated I think so a virus kept trying to terminate it it might cause the svchost to use all the cpu time.

Got Kerio running now, before I was relying just on the NAT of my router which in theory should stop it anyway, but still...I'll see if it helps cos my rpc service is set to restart the service by me as a workaround but I got the patch installed too so I shouldn't have needed to do that.

Cheers RoganJosh - doesnt do it at all now, normally it'd have done it 3/4 times at least but not once since I been running the firewall.