Host process for windows services stopped working and was closed

Hello Glenn,

Welcome to Microsoft Windows Vista community!

Any changes made to the computer prior to the issue, like any hardware or software installation?

Try the steps below:

Step 1:

This error seems to happen due to some incompatibility between a program on your computer and Windows Vista. It could be a lot of different applications, so you first have to determine which program is actually causing the problem. You can do this by viewing the Event Logs on your Vista machine. Please follow the below below instructions and paste in the Problem Details for the svchost.exe entry on the released version of Vista and reply to this thread.

1.  Open Problem Reports and Solutions by clicking the Start button , clicking Control Panel, clicking System and Maintenance, and then clicking Problem Reports and Solutions.

2.  In the left pane, click View problem history.

3.  Double-click the problem that you want to view.

4.  Use the "Copy to clipboard" link in the lower left corner and paste into a reply to this thread.

Step 2:

Meanwhile, install the latest updates and check.

Step 3:

If that didn’t do anything, you might be having an issue with the Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) Windows service. If you starting getting this message after you did a Windows update, then BITS could be the culprit. You’ll need to follow the instructions in below article on how to repair the corrupt BITS files.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940520

Step 4:

Try performing a clean boot.Before that try performing a clean boot: To help troubleshoot error messages and other issues, you can start Windows Vista by using a minimal set of drivers and startup programs. This kind of startup is known as a "clean boot." A clean boot helps eliminate software conflicts. Follow the below link for more information: 

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929135

Hope this information is helpful.

Regards,

Savan – Microsoft Support.