Services.exe CPU flat out

Hey guys, it's been a while...

Got a problem on my win2k sp4 install, it's been running 100% for probably about a year now, I don't do much cept for the odd browsing, downloading. Don't have any viruses, that I know of, coz I don't usually download programs or use email.

Anyway, all of a sudden recently, at least once a day, services.exe will hog the cpu, maxing it out, and trying to open anything else will take several minutes just to bring it up on screen.

Read some posts on other forums with similar problems, suggested looking in the event log, 'great idea!' I thought. Anyway, did it and narrowed it down to 2 services which keep timing out. One was the logical disk manager (when I get home I'll give more details - at work at the moment) and the other was... I can't remember. But nevermind, I'll put that in later.

Just wondering, hoping, someone has heard of this problem before and knows what I can do to resolve it. Don't use my computer much, but when I do I like to get in there and it to work, unlike now where theres a 50/50 chance that I won't be able to do anything for a good 15 minutes or so.

Thanks in advance guys. Will give more details later.

Some more info now that I'm home:

Event log reads:

Source: Service Control Manager
Event ID: 7011
Description:
Timeout (30000 milliseconds) waiting for a transaction response from the dmserver service.

It actually turns out that that's the only one causing the problem. This morning when it happened, the first timeout occurred at 6.51am, then 35 timeouts later, at 7.22am, I assume the computer went back to normal, because the next one wasn't till I got home and turned the monitor back on.

I think it might be the hard drive crashing, just some very strange symptoms, is all.

Any ideas?

just when you thought you were safe

I can't seem to find the file dmserver.exe on my computer though... I can find a dmserver.dll, which is backed up in a service pack uninstall folder, *and* I haven't had a single popup, as the write-up on the file claims.

Nevertheless, I will try several anti-whatever programs and see what they come up with.

Tried just about every anti-whatever program under the sun, including the one who reported it as a virus/spyware/malicious. Always came up nada.

Never mind it anyway, I'm convinced that it's hardware, the mobo has had other problems, it's probably just the ide controller or something.

dmserver is part of gator - it's causing problems - the event shows you that... get rid of the dll you found, it should error out looking for the exe, or nullify the exe.

dmserver is used by a couple of "helper" apps and trojans - try these instructions
http://www3.ca.com/securityadvisor/p...x?id=453078852
http://labs.paretologic.com/spyware....met%20DMServer
http://securityresponse.symantec.com...arkmoon.b.html
http://securityresponse.symantec.com....fuwudoor.html

Nope, sorry Noo, looks like this file is legit. I don't have any other signs of infection, the file is never run, nor is dmserver.exe, the file is only 12kb in size and is credited to Veritas. Aren't they the guys who wrote some of the disk management software for M$ ?

dmserver.dll definitely is

so perhaps a corrupt dll...

and check through the comments here