A single svchost.exe process is constantly running taking up 50% CPU and 1GB memory (PID 912)

[samlu1999]

There is this one svchost.exe process that is eating up all my computer CPU and Memory.

I have done a couple things to try and identify what this process is actually doing on my PC.

Firstly, I have in the command line, entered tasklist /SVC and it came up with a myriad of different svchost.exe programs each with a different PID.

To narrow it down, in the Resource Monitor, it states that the svchost.exe that is taking up so much memory and CPU has the PID 912, which tracing back to the command line, means that it is doing:
"AeLookupSvc, BITS, Browser, CertPropSvc, EapHost, gpsvc, IKEEXT, iphlpsvc, LanmanServer, MMCSS, ProfSvc, Schedule, SENS, SessionEnv, ShellHWDetection, Themes, Winmgmt, wuauserv"

Can someone more experienced try and explain which ones out of these it is doing, what it does, and whether it can be stopped?

Thanks,

Sam

 

[gbb0330]

There is this one svchost.exe process that is eating up all my computer CPU and Memory.

I have done a couple things to try and identify what this process is actually doing on my PC.

Firstly, I have in the command line, entered tasklist /SVC and it came up with a myriad of different svchost.exe programs each with a different PID.

To narrow it down, in the Resource Monitor, it states that the svchost.exe that is taking up so much memory and CPU has the PID 912, which tracing back to the command line, means that it is doing:
"AeLookupSvc, BITS, Browser, CertPropSvc, EapHost, gpsvc, IKEEXT, iphlpsvc, LanmanServer, MMCSS, ProfSvc, Schedule, SENS, SessionEnv, ShellHWDetection, Themes, Winmgmt, wuauserv"

Can someone more experienced try and explain which ones out of these it is doing, what it does, and whether it can be stopped?

Thanks,

Sam

the only way to find out which service is responsible is to configure them to run in a separate svchost. so lets start with wuauserv which is often the culprit, and is also known as windows update service.
open command prompt and run the following commands:

net stop wuauserv

sc config wuauserv type= own

net start wuauserv

this will isolate wuauserv in its own svchost and you can check the effect on CPU and identify the PID with tasklist /svc, you are already familiar with the process.

rinse and repeat with all services until you get to the one thats responsible for the CPU spike

 

[curlscurls]

Thank you! I'm having the same svchost problem with it overloading the cpu. I followed the solution to stop wuauserv and immediately the cpu use went back to normal.

Now I need to find out what wuauserv is beyond windows update service. ... or I guess more accurately have to figure out what to do with it.

I'm a little confused on how this works:
- Stopped wuauserv and cpu comes down and svchost stops having high cpu usage numbers. But wuauserv is still running in the services list? I thought the stop would stop wuauserv? (though it obviously stopped the cpu use by wuauserv.)

- THEN tried the sequence to restart wuauserv separately. CPU stays down at first then starts showing higher cpu use. wuauserv is still running. BUT going to the services that go with that high svchost goes to the same long set of processes shown by the original poster such as aelookupsvc etc. I thought the separating would put wuauserv into a separate svchost?

(As an additional check: Going to wuauserv service and asking to see the associated process goes back to svchost, then looking at services from that particular svchost goes forward to that long list including aelookupsvc.)

I've been trying to track down this high cpu problem for a while. On MS help pages they send you to a Windows virus detector that detected nothing and took 12 hours to do so. Hadn't hit info or a good solution on other sites either.

Thank you to gbb0330 !!!!!!!!!!😍

 

[gbb0330]

sometimes wuauserv will start again on its own. to prevent that go into services.msc and disable the windows update service.
CPU usage by wuauserv can often be resolved by updating the windows update client.

the links below will take you to the right place

Windows 7
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3161647

Windows 8
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3163023