I have Windows 7, 64-bit, installed on two computers: my Dell Dimension 5150, and my Dell Lattitude D830.

Today's gripe is this:

Sometimes I look at my cpu usage thingie and I see something like this:

alt text http://wiki.xdroop.com/gallery2/d/3109-1/win7-20090928-220527001.jpg

On my Dimension 5150, this state can go on, uninterrupted, for hours. After a certain amount of time I get annoyed by it (since the VMware Server instance installed on it starts to steadily lose time if the host remains in this state too long) and I reboot the computer to make it go away.

On my Lattitude D830, it comes and goes and comes and goes. It doesn't seem to make any difference as to what network I am connected to, what I am doing on the computer, whether I am docked or not...

So I bring up the task manager, and I see this:

alt text http://wiki.xdroop.com/gallery2/d/3111-1/win7-20090928-220549001.jpg

OK, so the main offender is some svchost.exe thing which is going berserk. So I right click on the svchost instance and select Go to Services. This brings up the DLL-based services that are associated with this svchost instance. I see this:

http://wiki.xdroop.com/gallery2/d/3113-1/win7-20090928-220659001.jpg http://wiki.xdroop.com/gallery2/d/3113-1/win7-20090928-220659001.jpg

This tells me that these are the offenders (written out for Google's benefit):

• MpsSvc "Windows Firewall"
• DPS "Diagnostic Policy Service"
• BFE "Base Filtering Engine"

On the desktop it is interfering with the VMware server; on the laptop it is killing my battery life. I could go 4-5 hours on one charge; when these services freak out I'm lucky to get 2.

I do have a version of Symantec Endpoint installed on these computers, v11.0.4202.75.

I would really like to know why MpsSvc, DPS, and/or BFE decide to freak out and take my computer down with them.

Can anyone give me any hints?

I have Windows 7, 64-bit, installed on two computers: my Dell Dimension 5150, and my Dell Latitude D830.

Today's gripe is this:

Sometimes I look at my CPU usage thingie and I see something like this:

On my Dimension 5150, this state can go on, uninterrupted, for hours. After a certain amount of time I get annoyed by it (since the VMware Server instance installed on it starts to steadily lose time if the host remains in this state too long) and I reboot the computer to make it go away.

On my Lattitude D830, it comes and goes and comes and goes. It doesn't seem to make any difference as to what network I am connected to, what I am doing on the computer, whether I am docked or not...

So I bring up the task manager, and I see this:

OK, so the main offender is some svchost.exe thing which is going berserk. So I right click on the svchost instance and select Go to Services. This brings up the DLL-based services that are associated with this svchost instance. I see this:

This tells me that these are the offenders (written out for Google's benefit):

• MpsSvc "Windows Firewall"
• DPS "Diagnostic Policy Service"
• BFE "Base Filtering Engine"

On the desktop it is interfering with the VMware server; on the laptop it is killing my battery life. I could go 4-5 hours on one charge; when these services freak out I'm lucky to get 2.

I do have a version of Symantec Endpoint installed on these computers, v11.0.4202.75.

I would really like to know why MpsSvc, DPS, and/or BFE decide to freak out and take my computer down with them.

Can anyone give me any hints?