>I was just minding my business programming in VFP and machine started slowing down. Within an hour it gows to a craw.
>
>Naturally I start investigating. Stopping and/or uninstalling whatever seems suspicious. I notice that for some reason in Windows Task Manager the task manager itself is taking 25% of CPU time.
>
>Any idea why this might be?
>
>TIA,
>
>Alex

It runs DLLs as services. You should be able to see which ones are using it by entering in a prompt:

tasklist /svc /FI "IMAGENAME eq svchost.exe"

You might want to read this for more help (it's what I used to figure it out only to learn it was windows update causing the problem):

http://www.watchingthenet.com/how-to-identify-what-programs-started-svchostexe-in-windows.html