Svchost.exe is a hosting process for Windows services. It means that this Windows process runs various Windows services under the name of svchost.exe. Well, let us find out more information regarding Svchost.exe. What is svchost.exe and what should you do if you face it?
WHAT IS SVCHOST.EXE?
Svchost.exe is a common and legitimate Windows process which loads some other crucial services for proper Windows operation. However, in some cases the users are complaining that Svchost.exe is sagging their CPU or Memory resources without obvious reasons, for instance at moments when the user does not run any programs.
Svchost.exe is one of mysterious processes which always runs in Windows and is absolutely essential. But, you never know exactly what it is doing. Identifying the actual services and programs which are running inside each Svchost.exe process is a task worth knowing, especially when the process takes up 99 or 100 percent of your CPU.
Before we discuss solutions, let us get a deeper understanding of what this process actually does and how you are able to fix some issues that might occur.
For your information, svchost stands for Service Host. It does exactly what as the name, helps to host services. A service in Windows is a simple program in the operating system that does a particular job and runs in the background at all times once your computer is on, even if you are not logged in.
Most programs which you are familiar with run as a stand-alone executable such exe. But, most services are implemented in the form of DLLs, that cannot run on their own. So, the svchost loads those DLLs and runs them itself. That is why when you open the Windows Task Manager, you are going to see a bunch of svchost.exe processes running. If you want more info on the Task Manager.
You are going to notice that currently there are eight svchost processes running on our computer, all using up various amounts of memory and running under different user names. So, let us say one of them is running at an excessively high CPU usage of 100 percent, how to identify the actual application running?
Actually, there are two ways to go about this; doing it all manually using the command prompt and Services tool or by using a third party application. We are going to explain one of them for you.
IDENTIFY SVCHOST.EXE PROCESSES VIA COMMAND PROMPT
Apparently, there are some steps that you have to do to identify the Svchost.exe process manually using the command prompt. Here are steps:
- At the first step, you have to go ahead and click on Start. Then, simply Run and type in CMD. Click OK. In Windows 8.1, you are able to go ahead and right-click on the Start button and select Run.
- Please type in the following into the command window and press Enter.
tasklist /svc /fi “imagename eq svchost.exe
You have to get an output with the name, PID, and service description
- Now, you are going to see each svchost process along with its unique ID number and the services it is responsible for running. But, those names are still very vague and are all short-hand names. In order to get some more useful information regarding the process, you are able to use the Services browser in Windows.
- The next step that you have to do is to Right-click on My Computer, select Manage. On the resulting screen, select Computer Management and then select Services and Applications. Simply, select Services.
- In this step, you have to try to match the vague Windows service name with the easily readable names in the Services tab. This can take several times as if you take the process with ID 1436 and its name WudfSvc, you need to try to discover it in the list. If you double-click on one the service names, you are going to see their vague name also, so that you are able to match them up.
HOW TO SOLVE SVCHOST.EXE HIGH MEMORY OR CPU USAGE ISSUES?
SOLUTION 1: SCAN YOUR COMPUTER FOR VIRUSES.
Lots of viruses or malicious programs are able to cause the svchost.exe high CPU or memory usage issue. So, before you continue to solve the Svchost.exe high CPU usage issue, you have to use this Malware Scan and Removal Guide to check and delete viruses or malicious programs which may be running on your computer.
SOLUTION 2. FIND AND DISABLE THE SERVICE WHICH CAUSES THE SVCHOST HIGH CPU USAGE ISSUE.
Svchost.exe is a process which is needed by some services or programs in order for them to run. So, you have to determine which service or program runs under the svchost.exe process and is hogging your system’s CPU and memory resources. Also, proceed to disable or totally uninstall that program or service.
- Firstly, you have to press Ctrl + Alt + Del keys simultaneously and then open Task Manager.
- At the Processes tab, you are able to check the Show processes from all users checkbox.
- The next step that you have to do is to right-click on the high usage svchost.exe process and choose Go to Service.
- At the services tab you are going to see some highlighted services which run under the svchost.exe process.
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- Now, it is time for you to find out which process is hogging CPU resources. To do that, you are able to do it in two ways.
Way 1: You are able to perform a sequential search using Google (for all highlighted services) and see if the searched service is critical or not for your computer.
Ways 2: You are able to try to sequentially stop services (one by one) until CPU resources come back to normal. To stop a service temporarily, you have to select a service. Please right-click on it, and then select Stop Service.
Well, the text above is an explanation about Svchost.exe and the solution to solve Svchost.exe high memory or CPU usage issues. We hope your issues go away.
AUTHOR BIO
On my daily job, I am a software engineer, programmer & computer technician. My passion is assembling PC hardware, studying Operating System and all things related to computers technology. I also love to make short films for YouTube as a producer. More at about me…
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