helpsvc.exe - why is it going nuts?

Well, I was here a little over a month ago after I did a major clean-out and a defrag using SmartDefrag and then my CPU started going nuts. I ended up doing some benchmarking tests to check my hardware and the tests turned out well.

I started noticing some other heavy CPU behavior when I wasn't on the system so the other night I ran the Malware removal procedure. Malware forum folks say my logs are clean so I am back to square one - guessing this is a hardware or OS issue.

The issue I'm experiencing is after I've run my laptop all day and it is sitting idle while I'm eating dinner or something, I hear the CPU start running all erratically. I'll run over to the machine and check the task manager and I see "helpsvc.exe" hogging a huge portion of the CPU. Again, this is while the system is sitting unused - usually only Thunderbird and possibly Firefox running, plus the normal/essential background tasks. I kill "helpsvc.exe" and the system calms back down to normal.

I realize that "helpsvc.exe" is a trusted Windows process. But, my question is, what exactly does it do and why does it just start randomly like that? I'm also experiencing extra CPU usage while doing fairly mundane things like surfing the net - again, I check the running processes but by the time I get to it in these instances, I don't see anything suspicious. Is there a way to disable this process? Does this process have anything to do with the Windows Indexing Service (another process I've considered disabling because I've read that it also hogs the CPU)?

To compound the problem, I have no OS disc or I would try a repair. I do have an older XP disc (SP1) but it says it is incompatible if I try using it on anything higher than SP1 (my laptop is XP SP3) even though, I could have sworn I used it to do a repair on my desktop with SP2. I'm thinking about replacing this machine, but I'm unable to do so yet financially. So, I'm stuck with troubleshooting this baby. I'm hoping that this is only a software issue that I can fix without the OS, if it is a hard drive problem, then I'm back to square one again since I have no OS disc.

Any suggestions or ideas are greatly welcomed! Thanks!

 

Dang! Thanks so much for the quick reply! I will disable both of those things. Thank you for the link - I'll check back if the problem persists! I hope this calms things down. This system is not old enough to be failing!

Have a great holiday! :wave

 

Sorry DomLuc, I mis-typed.

I followed the instructions on the link you provided - set Help & Support at Manual, set Indexing to Disabled, as per the recommendations in the "safe" column.

Thank you again.