svchost.exe runs wild

Lately when I boot Win 2k pro I find svchost.exe consuming 99% of my cpu (as indicated on the processes tab of Windows Task Manager). I have shut down all the tray programs but nothing seems to help. This doesn't happen every time and I can't predict when it occurs. Has anyone had this problem and found a cure? I don't know if it is related but I also always get numerous error messages in the event viewer (system log-123 consecutive messages all saying the same thing- "the driver detected a controller error on \device\harddisk1\dr2 "). If this makes sense to anyone I would appreciate the benefit of your insight. Thanks

 

It is reporting errors on your hard drive controller.

In other words, you probably are looking at a controller failure before much longer. When that happens, you won't be able to access that hard drive.

Repair time.

The CPU time is probably being chewed up by the PC having to try so many times to read/write the hard drive.

 

If you are using any firewall software, try disabling it's startup and see if that makes any difference.
Try updating your IDE drivers---else, Zephyr's prophecy may come to pass.

 

Thanks for the suggestions. I use ZoneAlarm Pro and I have tried disabling it but it didn't seem to help (but due to the "random" nature of the problem I can't be sure about anything I've tried so far). As for updating the IDE drivers, I'm game but I do not know exactly what this means or how to do it. If it helps my hard drive is a Quantum Fireball AS30.0 and I have a Gigabyte m/b GA-6OXE and Intel 82801BA Ultra ATA Controller. Also I should mention that my computer is a bit unique in that my hard drives are in plugin cases, so I can back up and restore using Ghost. I usually run with just one drive plugged in (the other slot is empty except when I'm backing up or restoring). Ofcourse one slot is for the C drive and this slot is always occupied. All drives are set as masters. This also allows me to quickly switch between OS's too. Thanks again.

 

I forgot to mention that I don't have this problem at all when I plug in the drive with Win XP Pro on it. The Event log shows no incidences of the error as reported above when running Win 2k Pro.