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am showing a "generic host process for win32 services" error message every time I connect to the internet. The event viewer lists the faulting application as svchost.exe and the faulting module as netapi32.dll. The error only occurs when connected to the internet and can happen within minutes of connecting or sometimes take a couple of hours. When the pop-up box appears my connection to the internet is disabled although the icon stays in the tray. I also lose my sound. A restart is need to fix.
The computer is running XP Pro with SP2 installed and the machine is a stand alone, it's not connected to a wired or wireless network. I am not using a router, just the dsl modem. The problem started about 1 month ago and I've been trying to fix it off and on since. There were no hardware changes at that time. I can think of no software installs around that time. I am using the built-in windows firewall. I have run every virus scanner, stand alone and online that I can find (including MS malware removal tool dated Sep 2006) with updated definitions and they turn up no infections. I've run ad-aware and lavasoft se personnel and all they find are cookies. I've run removers from symantec and others for the various worms that were exploiting svchost.exe but they tell me no files were found and I'm not infected.
I turned off automatic updates. I turned off system restore. I ran the scanners and checkers from safe mode. I removed all HP printer software that was on my machine. I disabled DEP for generic host processes. Still the error persists.
In short I've been googling this problem for about a month and I've done everything I could find and still the error persists. I'd rather not do a format as reinstalling the software on this machine would take days. I'm hoping that maybe someone can offer some guidance on something I've missed.
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