High mem usage and crashes

[Shadow03]

Everytime I run a game or a operation that requires a lot of power, my PC runs extremely slow and will sometimes crash. It says it was a problem with a device driver <blah blah blah>. This only recently became a problem.
I have scanned for viruses (Macfee, AVG) and spyware (S&D, AASE) and the only thing that came up (again) was with S&D: " FastClick" and "Avenue A inc."
In Taskmanager the svchost.exe process has been running consistently at 34,000+ Kb, explorer.exe at 32,000+ Kb and lsass.exe at 31,000+ Kb with no running apps.

Here's My Computer:

AMD Athalon XP 2200+ MSI
1.5 Gb SDRAM 40 gig HD + 160 gig 2nd HD +120 gig ex. HD
128 MB GeForce FX 5200 WinXP Home sp2

Thanks for any help you can give.

 

[da_foosh_masta]

that shouldn't be happening

 

[Lonewolf5460]

if it says it is a problem with a device driver then it is read it next time find out what part then update the driver for that part that should resolve your issue.

 

[Shadow03]

Thanks...will do. When it happens again, I'll let you know what it said. Is that the only thing it could be though? I still donlt understand why the svchost.exe, lsass.exe and explorer.exe (located in c:\windows\explorer.exe ... not system32...if that makes any difference) are taking up so much mem usage.

 

[Lonewolf5460]

maybe the driver is causing issues there after you do update check again and see if they are still that high.

 

[Shadow03]

I don't know what part of what I did that fixed it, but the problem seems to have been solved. Thanks for the advice.

 

[Lonewolf5460]

no prob.

 

[C0RR0SIVE]

One reason they would take a lot of memory is if you keep the PC on for extended periods of time.

 

[Shadow03]

you know, Charles, that might have had something to do with it. Now that I think about it, other than rebooting, my computer is on a lot. Thanks for the input.

 

[alecjahn]

One reason they would take a lot of memory is if you keep the PC on for extended periods of time.

That really hasnt been an issue since Windows 95/98. A reboot will do you good, occasionally, though.

SVCHOST is an important system process, and usually has a few to several instances of it running at a time. SVCHOST should only be in the system32 folder, if I remember correctly. I had some spyware a while back that added another SVCHOST to my processes and found out that the one in my c:\windows folder was the culprit. Don't delete it yet, but I would definately do some research on it. You know the drill.