How to diagnose random SVCHOST crashes

[kekk0]

Hi,

I'm experiencing random crashes of svchost.exe; when it happens, every command I give won't be done, like closing any window or opening task manager even shutting down windows. I can only reset the machine.

Assuming there are no spywares/viruses/malware, is there a way I can diagnose what is happening? i.e. monitoring the system until a crash happens and getting a log from somewhere, something like a MS or third party utility or something I can enable in windows itself?

My machine: e8400, mb gigabyte EP45-DS3 latest bios, 4gb corsair, 9800gtx+, windows xp sp3.

Let me know if you need more details.

Thank you in advance.

[cluberti]

Well, first things first - do you know which svchost is crashing? There are quite a few, all containing lots of services. You are going to have to break apart the svchost into multiple individual svchosts to host each service it normally contains to figure out which service is actually crashing, so you're going to need to know which is causing it.

[beats]

Sysinternals' Process Explorer can reveal what instances and child processes each svchost process is running. Edited June 11, 2009 by beats