>I have a server that has started taking 99% cpu this morning and is absolutely crawling! This happens in safe mode as well, making it very difficult to troubleshoot. Has anyone else run into this problem or have any suggestions? I finally got the services screen to come up, so will try to investigate there.

First, I'd download and install ProcessExplorer from Microsoft, which gives a much better view of what's going on in the server than Task Manager e.g. it can show you utilization of individual services within an instance of svchost.exe. ( http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx )

The most common causes of this problem are:

1. Failed update from Microsoft (failed, or successful update that is incompatible)
2. Malware

If it looks like a runaway service (i.e. option 1 above) you can try uninstalling the update that caused the problem. You can look at recently installed updates in Microsoft Update...Review your update history. If you spot a likely culprit there, you can uninstall it in Add/Remove Programs.

Hopefully it's not malware.