Svchost.exe searchindexer.exe killing my HD

Tomcat, on Thursday August 28, 2008 06:53:22 PM

Hi, can anyone help me understand how svchost.exe works.

Basically my hard drive has been making a few weird noises and the HD led is constantly active even when all applications are closed and all none essential processes are terminated.

I installed a file activity monitor so that I could see what files where being accessed on the drive; I could not believe what I found. Within 1 minute there where over 30,000 file accesses and 80% of them where svchost.exe and the other 20% where searchindexer.exe.

I’m no computer whiz but it seemed as if my hard divers where being scanned by svchost.exe, the files that where being accessed appeared to be in alphabetical order, but with major gaps and swapping between drives?

My first thought was a virus/spyware/hacker but my firewall shows no activity and all my anti-virus/spyware scans have come up clean.

Any ideas would be helpful. Many thanks in advance.

Configuration: Windows Vista
Internet Explorer 7.0

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Tomcat, on Thursday August 28, 2008 07:02:56 PM

if you wish to see what im talking about pleasee see this picture.

http://server6.theimagehosting.com/image.php?img=ss.92a.jpg

all that activity in 1/10th of a second. This just goes on and on none-stop.

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Jijo, on Thursday August 28, 2008 07:04:17 PM

Under which user the svchost.exe is running?

1-> Open Task Manager
2-> Go to Processes tab
3-> Sort by Process Name

You can see so many svchost.exe s. Make sure that all svchost.exe s are running under one of these users:-

SYSTEM, LOCAL SERVICE, NETWORK SERVICE

if not its a virus

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Tomcat, on Thursday August 28, 2008 09:15:07 PM

Hi, YES i have 5 running under SYSTEM, 4 running under LOCAL SERVICE and 3 under NETWORK SERVICE. Searchindexer.exe is also under SYSTEM.

Not long after I made that post, my hard drive finally gave up and over heated, well i assume it over heated becuase it was no longer showing, i gave it an hour to cool and restarted pc and now its back again. Im gunna backup the stuff on that drive encase it goes completely :(.

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Longinus, on Saturday September 27, 2008 07:04:30 AM

Its probably your searchindexer doing its job and indexing the files on your hard drive. Its a new service updated into windows. It indexes all the files on your hard drive to increase the search function speed.

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Sak, on Friday October 3, 2008 02:31:42 AM

I'm on WinXP SP2 but having the same issues with this file.
I noticed that there's two other files that are related to it.

searchindexer.exe
searchfilterhost.exe
searchprotocolhost.exe

I checked Add/Remove and noticed Windows Search 4.0 was installed.
It probably came thru one of the updates.
I had Task Manager (Processes) opened during uninstall.
After it finished, the 3 files were gone.
After the reboot, still gone.
I haven't seen it pop up in Processes for several days now.
Hopefully that's the last that I see of this issue.

Good Luck!

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