"Generic host process... needs to close"

Hello everyone,

About once a day I get the error message "generic host process for win32 services has encountered a problem and needs to close" appear. When this appears I can no longer open windows programs (MS office, paint, notepad) -- if I have a program already open (e.g. MS word) it may or may not continue to work. To "resolve" I have to restart my computer - sometimes this involves having to do a hard shutdown (holding power button).

I have done some searching for this online and tried a few things suggested to other people (windows updates/hotfix, scanning for malware/viruses using MalwareBytes Anti-Malware and Ad-aware and AVG) but these steps have not resolved the problem.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions on how to proceed.

Sarah

 

That is a very cryptic error.
Can you post the faulting dll or app? It should be listed in the error message.

 

More information

Thanks for the link and suggestion -- while I'm here I'll share some more details with you, as the problem happened this evening -- I took photos of the messages because I couldn't do screenshots (don't work when I get the error), so here I am getting all nerdy...

I seem to think that I get the error message most often when I have been away from my computer for a while and the monitor shuts off (I have a laptop).

Here's the first message I get... (I'll post the link as it doesn't seem like I'm allowed img tags or html?)
http://i727.photobucket.com/albums/ww278/sarahpea42/CopyofOct026.jpg

What error report contains:
http://i727.photobucket.com/albums/ww278/sarahpea42/CopyofOct021.jpg

Technical information about the error report:


This time I tried clicking on debug and got this lovely message that says "This system is shutting down. Please save all work in progress and log off. Any unsaved changes will be lost. This shutdown was initiated by NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM "
http://i727.photobucket.com/albums/ww278/sarahpea42/CopyofOct027.jpg


If you have any other suggestions I'd love to hear 'em!

 

Hi Sarracenia!

We had the problem like that in our local net. In our case the cause was the virus (I don't remember its name) that was filling out the net with numerous packets that could not be handled properly by Windows. This fix WindowsXP-KB958644-x86-ENU.exe can help protect svchost service on computers, but it won't cure the virus so if this is case, you should find it somehow.

Here is another link:
http://download.microsoft.com/downlo...83-x86-ENU.exe

 

I see that the faulting dll is rpcss. There is a kb article and hotfix here that refers to this problem. It applies to sp2. May or may not be related. You may just have a corrupt dll or you installed a new driver or software that caused a problem.

This problem also might be related to dcom (as pointed out in the link by broni). Check out this security bulletin for info about patching dcom and rpc. The bulletin is a few years old and if you keep up with your patches, you probably already have this update.