The other day, my pc was very sluggish and I noticed that ccsvchst.exe had over 200,000 handles allocated. The pc had been on continuously for about 4 days. After rebooting, the handles were around 2,500. Over the course of the next several hours, they increased to over 10,000 with no signs of stopping. It has been a continual issue with this pc where after several days, it becomes sluggish and eventually crashes if not rebooted. I believe that the excessive handles could be the cause of the issue.
I was running NIS 2009. I had a license for the new version (NIS 2012), so I used the Norton removal tool and installed NIS 2012, but the same thing is happening. Initially after rebooting, the handles were around 2,500. Over the course of 8 hours, they have increased to over 10,000.
It appears that the program is not releasing handles. Here are my specs:
Microsoft Windows XP
Professional
Version 2002
Service Pack 3
Lenovo
Intel Core2 Duo CPU T7500
2.19 GHz
3 GB RAM
Here is a screenshot showing the current handles allocated to this process.
