For the last few days the CPU has been running at 50-75%. At first I ignored it (thought that a Windows Defender scan or anti-virus scan was going on). After it kept going like that for several days I started doing some digging. What I've found is it is a svchost.exe process with two services under it; DcomLaunch (DCOM Server Process Launcher, C:\Windows\system32\rpcss.dll) and PlugPlay (Plug Play, C:\Windows\system32\umpnpmgr.dll ).

If I try stopping the process Vista immediately logs these error messages:

• The DCOM Server Process Launcher service terminated unexpectedly. It has done this 1 time(s). The following corrective action will be taken in 60000 milliseconds: Reboot the machine.
• The Plug and Play service terminated unexpectedly. It has done this 1 time(s). The following corrective action will be taken in 60000 milliseconds: Reboot the machine.
• The process C:\Windows\system32\services.exe (AREA51-M5790) has initiated the restart of computer AREA51-M5790 on behalf of user NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM for the following reason: No title for this reason could be found
  Reason Code: 0x30006
  Shutdown Type: restart
  Comment: Windows must now restart because the DCOM Server Process Launcher service terminated unexpectedly

What I guess I'm wondering is what are these processes doing and is there a way to stop/control them? I'm not even looking for this answer necessarily. I'm really wondering what next should I do/take a look at?

System stats:
Alienware Area-51 M5790 Laptop - Vista Ultimate
Intel Core Duo T7400 @ 2.16GHz
2046 MB RAM

The cores are running very hot (75C and the HD at 50C) so I'm king of worried!

Go to Start and type in "perfmon /report" (without the quotes) and press Enter. Let the system generate the report and let us know what errors that it reports.

Well I didn't really sort it out but it stopped when I removed the bluetooth USB transmitter I had plugged AND rebooted (either one of those by themselves didn't seem to correct it). This was the last device I had installed about 2 weeks prior to this happening. I haven't used it since to see what would happen.

I've had issues with the Bluetooth adapter on my new Lenovo laptop. The Toshiba bluetooth stack kept crashing (it's a Kensington adapter). I may try out the Microsoft stack (I've got one of their Bluetooth adapters) this week - but it's not really crucial for me.

FWIW - the Toshiba stack worked just fine on my older Toshiba laptop (go figger!