NOTE: The version I'm currently having problems with is Vista Home Premium SP1

After updating to sp1, I did notice some improvement in the memory usage of
vista, with my 1G of memory, it normally ate up 60-66%. After installing sp1,
it slimmed down to 51-59%. These values are of course without any frontground
programs running.



But after a while a notice suddenly popped up from my firewall (I'm using
Comodo Firewall Pro) saying that svchost.exe is asking permission to edit the
registry, and part of the values it was modifying said Firewall.Override,
another one said AntiSpyware.Override, and another said AntiVirus.Override.
The attempts seem dubious so I had them all blocked, and spent the whole day
scanning the computer with all I have, even going so far as boot-time scans
and bootable antivirus CDs.

They all turned up negative, so as a final measure I ran the security file
checker from the command prompt using sfc/scannow. After scanning it said it
found problems but was not able to fix everything, and I rebooted to Normal
Mode to check out any problems. Then my firewall suddenly alerted me that it
was "learning", svchost.exe was now proceeding with changing the values I
mentioned before. I've had a bad experience with malware disguising itself as
svchost.exe before so I checked out the svchost.exe in question. It seemed
legitimate to me. proper version, proper location, and proper signatures.

After that little incident everything is normal except that now my computer
uses up at least 73% of RAM without any programs running. I haven't installed
anything since updating to sp1 so I've ruled out background programs as the
cause. Also I checked task manager and I didn't see any new processes
running, except that now I'm seeing a svchost.exe that's using up 40+MB of
RAM. I've determined that it's the one managing the settings for the Aero
Visual Scheme because everytime I terminate the process my scheme reverts to
the Vista Basic Scheme. But what's intriguing is that before the incident
I've never seen a svchost.exe like this one, and rather it's dwm.exe that's
managing my visual settings. What's odd now is that even with the svchost.exe
seemingly managing my visual settings, there's still the process dwm.exe
gobbling up 30+MB of ram. The two processes(dwm.exe and svchost.exe) are the
top two RAM gobblers according to task manager.

Is there an existing fix for this problem out there? I'd hate to do a fresh
reinstall of my system again, I no longer have the time to do so.

Do you actually use your computer for work or just fiddle with the OS?
You should find out if you actually need a software firewall like Commodo.
Not to rattle anyone's chain but most users do not need a software firewall
beyond what is already in Vista or XP, particularly if they are behind a
router firewall, unless they can specifically identify why exactly they need
the software firewall for what specific purpose.
Short of that software firewalls cause more problems than they are worth
with networking, false positive identification of malware and general system
slowdown, in part due to Vista UAC type behavior of constantly asking if you
want to do something without identifying if there really is a threat doing
so.
As you have noticed, Vista is a resource hog. So what? Unless you are
working on massive files in Photoshop, massive video edits or demanding 3-d
games very few applications that most people use would stretch the resources
of a 486 CPU. The biggest delay most people experience in computer
performance is related to getting data on and off the hard drive and not the
CPU or memory.

You do not not give any details of your system, more info would help to give
a better answer.
1. RAM is supposed to be used - unused RAM is wasted RAM - RAM memory is
used by your computer to pre-store/ pre-empt relevant application data
according to the needs/uses of the computer and user, because it is faster to
read data from RAM than your hard disk - if you load an application, then the
processor discards unnecessary data from RAM and replaces it with the data
you require.
The reason why you revert back to Vista Basic sometimes is basically you do
not have enough RAM - Vista any version operates far better on at least 2gb
RAM - if you are not in a position to increase RAM consider a flash drive
which is READYBOOST capable - but honestly increasing RAM would be your best
option - RAM is relatively quiet cheap now in comparison.
More info on RAM memory usage can be obtained by doing a search of the MS
sight or the internet.
--
Regards
Bob J
If advise given from anyone, solves problem or not, or if solved from
another source,post back & let us know.
Then we all benefit.



"kuwestiyonmark" wrote:

> NOTE: The version I'm currently having problems with is Vista Home Premium SP1
>
> After updating to sp1, I did notice some improvement in the memory usage of
> vista, with my 1G of memory, it normally ate up 60-66%. After installing sp1,
> it slimmed down to 51-59%. These values are of course without any frontground
> programs running.
>
> But after a while a notice suddenly popped up from my firewall (I'm using
> Comodo Firewall Pro) saying that svchost.exe is asking permission to edit the
> registry, and part of the values it was modifying said Firewall.Override,
> another one said AntiSpyware.Override, and another said AntiVirus.Override.
> The attempts seem dubious so I had them all blocked, and spent the whole day
> scanning the computer with all I have, even going so far as boot-time scans
> and bootable antivirus CDs.
>
> They all turned up negative, so as a final measure I ran the security file
> checker from the command prompt using sfc/scannow. After scanning it said it
> found problems but was not able to fix everything, and I rebooted to Normal
> Mode to check out any problems. Then my firewall suddenly alerted me that it
> was "learning", svchost.exe was now proceeding with changing the values I
> mentioned before. I've had a bad experience with malware disguising itself as
> svchost.exe before so I checked out the svchost.exe in question. It seemed
> legitimate to me. proper version, proper location, and proper signatures.
>
> After that little incident everything is normal except that now my computer
> uses up at least 73% of RAM without any programs running. I haven't installed
> anything since updating to sp1 so I've ruled out background programs as the
> cause. Also I checked task manager and I didn't see any new processes
> running, except that now I'm seeing a svchost.exe that's using up 40+MB of
> RAM. I've determined that it's the one managing the settings for the Aero
> Visual Scheme because everytime I terminate the process my scheme reverts to
> the Vista Basic Scheme. But what's intriguing is that before the incident
> I've never seen a svchost.exe like this one, and rather it's dwm.exe that's
> managing my visual settings. What's odd now is that even with the svchost.exe
> seemingly managing my visual settings, there's still the process dwm.exe
> gobbling up 30+MB of ram. The two processes(dwm.exe and svchost.exe) are the
> top two RAM gobblers according to task manager.
>
> Is there an existing fix for this problem out there? I'd hate to do a fresh
> reinstall of my system again, I no longer have the time to do so.