[Ham-Computers] Problem with SVCHOST.EXE on an XP Machine

[WA5CAB at cs.com]

I still run XP on one of our machines for various reasons.  I accidentally 
discovered an OS problem this morning.  I started Task Manager to check free 
ram and noticed that although nothing was doing anything, the CPU 
Utilization was steady at 50%.  A little checking revealed that it was being caused 
by one of the two running copies of svchost.exe belonging to SYSTEM.  Has 
anyone encountered this before?  And if so, what was the fix (short of 
attempting to reinstall the OS, which I'm not even sure is possible anymore)?

Robert Downs - Houston
wa5cab dot com (Web Store)
MVPA 9480