svchost netsvcs issue

[#1]

Wondered if anyone has experienced this issue where svchost netsvcs is taking up almost all my memory, for ages at a time making the system almost unusable when this happens.  Laptop is an hp g61, with 3gb memory running win7 home premium 64bit.
I have done the usual cleanup tasks, also cleared log files, disabled superfetch and tried everything on the web but issue still there.  It prob does need a reinstall as its likely clogged up with garbage, but the hdd is not even 1/2 full. Recently defragged as it was terribly fragmented which improved things for a while. Almost never shut the system down now as it takes over 30min to get to a useable state, I just hibernate it, butveven then it takes a good 10mins to be useable. Anyone help???

[#2]

Have you tried finding out what is hogging your CPU (and probably your HDD too) using Resource Monitor (built in to Win7 and other versions?)
My HDD thrashes away for about 10 minutes soon after the first startup of the day (from sleep) - the main culprits appear to be MSE updates and Windows Auto Updater and its associated datastore.edb file (currently 688MB on my disk and if you try to get rid of it Windows rebuilds it to the same size if not bigger!)
Have tried a few scan exclusion tweaks in MSE, have fixed the minimum and maximum sizes of the pagefile at the same value, and am contemplating switching Windows autoupdater to manual, although that is a little inconvenient and unless it gets worse I probably won't do that other than as a possible experiment.

[#3]

Thanks. I used the resourse monitor to tell me it was svchost causing the issues with excessive memory use. The only thing I have not done is switch auto update to manual. Will try this next and see what happens.  Failing that im stumped 

[#4]

Did turning off auto Window updater work?
Tried it myself this morning, and sure enough the 'up to 10 minutes' disk thrashing shortly after wake up disappeared.
Not really a solution because I now have to decide whether to put up with a short period of almost total unusability every day, or remember to check for updates manually - not ideal, and of course every time I do that I get the thrashing disk again, whether it finds any updates or not. 

[#5]

Hi Jay
It didnt seem to make much of a difference in the short term.  However, as the laptop is usually on a desk, I was using it on my knee one night, and noticed it was getting hot underneath, almost to an uncomfortable level.  This weekend, I completely stripped the laptop down, to see the state of the fan, and it was a disgrace
There was almost a centimetre of fluff etc, attached to the fan outlet, and the heatsink compound was all hard and flaky.  I have cleaned it all out, and reapplied decent heatsink compound, and all seems far far better.  There is much less HDD thrashing.  I can only surmise that the CPU was overheating and slowing down.
Anyhow, it seems I can escape a reformat at least till Win10 comes out 

[#6]

Prompted both by your discovery, the knowledge that my efforts with a vacuum cleaner have been only token ones for the 5 years I've had it, plus some strange goings on yesterday (screen went into power save mode while I was using PC, and wouldn't wake up again) I decided to have a look inside the case.
CPU fan heatsink fins were partially blocked, so removed fan to clean it up, and whilst wiping off the gunk from the CPU and heat sink dimly remembered the words 'thermal paste'. 
Anyway, £3.99 later it's now running at 22C on idle according to 'Core Temp', and no more funny business so far.
Hopefully our experiences will benefit a few others who never go beyond giving the outside a quick wipe with a cloth from time to time. 

[#7]

Since I cleaned it out, I also upgraded the memory from 3gb to 4gb, and things even better. Still hibernate the system as cold booting still takes about 5 mins to be useable. Likely due to 5yrs of accumulated os garbage, but tbh haven't got the time at the min to wipe the system and start again. Auto updates are also still off.

[#8]

Yes, Microsoft don't make a 'USP' of the certain fact that your PC will never boot up faster than the first time you switched it on! 
Don't know whether a fresh install of the OS would reduce the garbage - surely you would just have to sit there while all the updates were downloaded and installed, and then you'd be more or less back to square one?