Actually 10 - 30 thousand is about normal for explorer.exe. If I use AutoCad 2006, explorer.exe can get as high as 45 thousand. What I don't like about explorer.exe is it won't give up any resources at the close of an application.
The only way I can get explorer.exe to give up resources is to run an Ewido memory scan. Drops explorer.exe from 30,000 to about 2000, but it will eventually build back up again.
To get svchost.exe down is to stop some services. I have 3 instances of svchost in Task Manager. The highest is 17,000 and that's with only 20 services running.
This might help with which services to stop:
http://www.bold-fort...?showtopic=1093