Question 100s of processes running in Task Manager

[Ricky55]

Hi guys

Got a relatively clean install of Windows 11, just before Christmas. High spec machine and using in a business environment.

The machine has become slow and when I’ve looked in Task Manager I have around 100 processes running Including many duplicates.

Does this sound like some kind of malware?

Any steps I can take?

cheers Richard

 

[Lutfij]

High spec machine
Please list the specs to your build like so:
CPU:
Motherboard:
Ram:
SSD/HDD:
GPU:
PSU:
Chassis:
Please check and see what BIOS version you're currently on for your motherboard.

Got a relatively clean install of Windows 11, just before Christmas.
Where did you source the installer for your OS?

What sort of resources are being used when idling(besides the fact that there are a lot of processes running in the background)?

Does this sound like some kind of malware?
If you suspect an intrusion via malware, run malwarebytes and see if anything comes up from the scan.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

Most likely it’s malware

 

[geofelt]

100 processes is about normal.

What might have changed since performance was good?

 

[hotaru.hino]

I have 202 processes running right now:

All I had running at this time was Firefox, Discord, Steam, and the FFXIV launcher.

Duplicate processes are common with some apps for reliability reasons, especially with web browsers.

 

[Ricky55]

Hi guys

Sorry for the delayed response, I was unable to reply last night.

Spec..

CPU: 12th Gen i7 12700F
Motherboard: Asus ROG STRIX Z690-A GAMING WIFI D4
Ram: 64gb DDR4 3600mhz
SSD/HDD: Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 1TB OS
SSD/HDD: Samsung SSD 2.5" 4TB for mass storage
GPU: AMD Radeon RX 6600
PSU: EVGA 750 Watt
Chassis: NZXT iFlow

I downloaded the OS directly from the Microsoft website.

In terms of resources there are loads of Service Host processes running.

All of this is not using much CPU, its only 1% when idle although they do seem to be using around 15% of memory.

Its not my PC its my managers so I only have limit access to it.

Thanks for all help so far.

Richard

 

[johnbl]

Hi guys

Got a relatively clean install of Windows 11, just before Christmas. High spec machine and using in a business environment.

The machine has become slow and when I’ve looked in Task Manager I have around 100 processes running Including many duplicates.

Does this sound like some kind of malware?

Any steps I can take?

cheers Richard

I have 73 service host processes running. this is normal each one is different. older versions of windows would have fewer since the ran groups of processes together under one service host.
[Windows 10 Fix] Why Too Many Svchost.exe (Service Host) Process Running in Task Manager – AskVG

Best to ignore it and focus on what is taking up the cpu time or eating up resources on your machine. If you do not have admin rights you will have limited ability to fix problems.

you mentioned a clean install of windows being done. if the system process is the one that is using a lot of resources and you have a solid state drive. One thing you can do with out admin rights is to boot into BIOS and leave the machine running for a few hours. This gives the ssd time to run its firmware and catch up on its garbage collection. it can become backed up after a drive is formatted and a new OS is installed. drive firmware cleanup routines start after the system is idle for 5 minutes but often the drive to told to sleep after 10 minutes. This gives the drive very little time to complete its cleanup queue.

I have also seen problems with roaming profiles being used on shared machines that would cause slow downs.
most were configuration mistakes that included temp files in the profile and caused them to become very large.

 

[johnbl]

Hi guys

Sorry for the delayed response, I was unable to reply last night.

Spec..

CPU: 12th Gen i7 12700F
Motherboard: Asus ROG STRIX Z690-A GAMING WIFI D4
Ram: 64gb DDR4 3600mhz
SSD/HDD: Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 1TB OS
SSD/HDD: Samsung SSD 2.5" 4TB for mass storage
GPU: AMD Radeon RX 6600
PSU: EVGA 750 Watt
Chassis: NZXT iFlow

I downloaded the OS directly from the Microsoft website.

In terms of resources there are loads of Service Host processes running.

All of this is not using much CPU, its only 1% when idle although they do seem to be using around 15% of memory.

Its not my PC its my managers so I only have limit access to it.

Thanks for all help so far.

Richard

system looks like a normal low load. Windows will try to load programs into standby memory to use up some of the RAM that is not in use. Windows will also be running a background task to check the integrity of all of your drive space. it will attempt to read every sector/cluster of your drives and make sure you do not have any weak sectors that produce any errors. It does this at idle time and for large drives it can take a long time to complete.

looks like the machine should be relatively fast.
you will have to isolate the problem down to a subsystem like is the network access running slow?
or disk access hitting 100%
or driver problems like high nonpaged pool used becoming too high see task manager, performance tab to see paged and non page pool useage.

for network access, let us know if you are wired or wireless. you should be able to run a network speed test via a browser if you do not have rights to install apps.

it would be good to know if the problem occurs over time or if a reboot makes the machine run faster for a time.

 

[Ricky55]

Thanks both, it sounds more normal than I thought. It was my manager that was panicking. I actually use MacOS so I wasn't sure how many processes should be running.

At least is not using much CPU.

Thanks for your help.

 

[SkyNetRising]

It was my manager that was panicking. I actually use MacOS

Cool manager - to stress you about things, you clearly have no idea about.
Don't you have IT department to deal with such problems?

 

[hotaru.hino]

Thanks both, it sounds more normal than I thought. It was my manager that was panicking. I actually use MacOS so I wasn't sure how many processes should be running.

At least is not using much CPU.

Thanks for your help.

Here's some advise for your manager: unless something is actually wrong, ignore the numbers.

 

[USAFRet]

My system currently -247 Processes, CPU at 11%.
Purring like a kitten.

 

[John Chesterfield]

178 processes, 3% CPU here.

Your manager's device is behaving normally.

 

[alceryes]

New rig - 156 processes, 0-1% utilization. 156 is after trimming down things that this OS never needs running. I've seen retail systems with a few hundred, just sitting at the desktop, because of extra retail crap that gets loaded on.

Don't look at the number of processes, look at the CPU utilization.