Svchost.exe process taking 100-200k memory, is it normal?

[weequayx]

I have recently been running into a problem with the process svchost.exe .

I have noticed slowdown in games where in the past there has been none. I have read up on svchost being normal and necessary and what not. I have tried disabling automatic updates to no avail and thats about as far as I have gotten. Now should I just leave this or is this really the cause of this new slowdown.

I have completed numerous whole system scans with avg free and windows defender to find nothing at all except a few tracking cookies once in awhile. I am running vista 64-bit and have essentially a gaming computer I do very little else with it. Under the task manager I see physical memory at 20-22% and cpu usage fluctuates between 0 and about 5 percent sitting idle.

I have roughly 46 processes running atm. I have 8 instances of svchost.exe and one that maintains in excess of 100 k and which occasionally reaches 200k + . I am running a quad core cpu (an i7) and I know this may not appear to be a taxing occurrence but I can just feel the minute lagg where once before it was no where.

I point my finger at svchost because it has the highest memory usage I have seen in a non user process and its definitely new to me...


Perhaps there may be an off bios setting or something? I have no clue can someone please lend me some help here... Thank you very much in advance

 

[The_Prophecy]

This is normal. One svchost process typically takes about 100-150MB of ram, the others running typically use anywhere from 10-50MB. I wouldn't worry about it.

 

[weequayx]

Ok so a process running at 200 k is normal? I doubt that. I really do not think that, that much memory is nessesary to be tied up in a single process. I mean is there a explanation or a fix for it? Someone else must have a similar problem

 

[Ijack]

Although it appears as a single process, that svchost handles a number of services. On my system it is managing 9 services, some of them pretty critical ones.

Right-click on the process in Task Manager and select "Go to service(s)" to see what services this process manages. The one that is using about 95% (or more) of the memory is the Superfetch service. I leave it to you whether you think the memory that would be regained is worth the performance loss of disabling this service. You could always try disabling it (you'll see the memory usage of the svchost process plunge dramatically) and see what difference it makes.

But, to answer your question, yes - 100-200MB is quite normal for this particular process.

 

[weequayx]

Alright thanks, but also, as I mentioned my computer does one thing for the most part and thats game. Would the above mentioned process matter?

 

[Ijack]

Try it and see. In the end that's the only way to find out.

 

[pat mcgroin]

Get a copy of this and you can see what each instance of SVChost is doing and why it isnt a problem.
I currently have 10 of them running.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx