XPpro Service issues

Hi all

I have a strange problem, which started a couple days ago. On every boot up of my system svchost.exe peaks my cpu for about 45sec to 1minute. Just before this started to occur I installed Outpost Pro and edited my hosts file (1.2meg now) to redirect pesky ad’s. I verified each of the running svchost instances and they all seem to be valid versions, I have 5 running. It seems this particular svhost.exe, giving the troubles, has a couple threads with ..\dirvers\etc.. and ..\drivers\etc\hosts. Thinking this was the issue I replaced my hosts file with the default values, yet the problem still existed. I uninstalled Outpost Pro and no noticeable difference. I also attempted a restore point and that did not work either.

I also ran McAfee 8i and few spyware tools and they both came up positive. So I did a little research on the net and found no solid solution to why svchost.exe is peaking, for a long duration, on every startup.

Is it possible that my mainboard or CPU may be going out?

Kind regards,

 

Any suggestions?