[japanesegorilla]

So.... this is a long story but hopefully someone can help. Otherwise I'll just have to reinstall windows.

It starts like this... a while back I noticed that when I would download files 1. they would download at a combined speed of 10kbps tops 2. my laptop's fans would start blowing (which only happens when my cpu is under a heavy load) and 3. according to taskmanager something called DLLHOST.EXE would be using around 50% of my cpu. So I would force dllhost.exe to close using task manager and all would be well. My download speeds would jump by 3000% the fans would stop humming, and my computer would stop running like a snail. Unfortunately after 30 seconds or so dllhost.exe would come back and I would have to force it to close again. I did some searches online and basically found that it is a system file and should be left alone. However, after a couple of days it went away and all was well until today, a month later.

Today it all started again and this time I was pissed. I tried backing up dllhost.exe so that I could delete it, but not only could I not copy it as it was apparently constantly in use, but I couldn't delete it for the same reason. Finally somehow I was able to move it to my desktop which seemed to have solved the issue. It no longer ran itself and in the process slowed down my computer or choked my downloads. Unfortunately....

Once I was done downloading I figured it wouldn't matter if it wanted to choke my downloads, so I tried to move it back to the system32 folder but even though it would indicate that it successfully copied or moved, it wouldn't actually leave my desktop. Fine, whatever, oh well.

However, Windows Explorer decided to take up dllhosts.exe's cause and started using 50% of my cpu again, which means hot temperatures and constant fan noises. Obviously I can force it to close via task manager but it is really hard to use your computer without desktop icons or the taskbar. The annoying thing is that it doesn't matter if I try to download anything or not, windows explorer is always running and hogging my cpu. At least dllhost.exe was only a problem sometimes when I was downloading stuff. On the plus side, windows explorer doesn't seem top choke my downloads like dllhost.exe did.

I tried to do a system restore but that failed for whatever reason. I've done numerous antivirus scans and they have yielded nothing. No signs of spyware either.

Any thoughts? Suggestions?

Oh and by the way.
I'm running Windows Vista home premium 32bit. I haven't upgraded to the service pack yet either.

Thanks,
Jay