The last couple of weeks my desktop has been playing up - getting slower and slower, taking 5 minutes yesterday to open Firefox, etc. Task Manager showed that the culprits were Kaspersky Internet Security, which has always been a heavy user, but which was taking CPU usage up to 100%, and services.exe.
I am now trialling a less greedy antivirus antihacker package, ESET, but having been with Kaspersky since buying my first computer in 2003, am a bit wary, even though the research I've done suggests it is every bit as good as KIS. I have to say that my CPU usage has dropped dramatically, it takes nanoseconds to open OE, a huge improvement on KIS times, and since running a scan yesterday, it shows services.exe using nothing. For what it's worth, services.exe is showing up as a SYSTEM file on the Task Manager.
However in the process of researching, I discovered that the only place services.exe should be showing up is in Win 32 and ServicePackFiles/i386, where it is a legitimate Microsoft application. However I am also finding it in 3 or 4 other locations, all linked around service pack 3 or other microsoft security updates. I can't find anywhere to tell me whether this is also legitimate, or if I have a problem on my hands. One of the reasons I stuck with Kaspersky all these years is that I was virtually invisible on the net, and I don't know if ESET does the same. Any help or advice greatly appreciated.