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How to Troubleshoot SVCHOST.EXE 100% CPU Usage
Problems
By Ian Matthews December 10, 2007
If you have noticed
that your Windows 2000, XP or Vista PC is running slowly and that
SVCHOST.EXE is taking 100% of your single core CPU system (or 50% of your
dual core CPU system), this is the article for you!
SVCHOST.EXE is a
generic "host" or holder of services which run from .DLL's. Basically
.DLL's are small programs that other programs use, as opposed to .EXE
programs which users run.
The biggest problem
in diagnosing SVCHOST.EXE issues is that one SVCHOST, can and usually does,
run many services. Even worse, there are always many SVCHOST.EXE's
running in the PROCESSES tab of task manager.
Follow these steps to
determine what your computer is really doing with SVCHOST.
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To begin you need
to know which one has the problem, so start a TASK MANAGER, click the
PROCESSES tab, then click VIEW, SELECT COLUMNS and put a check mark into
PID (PROCESS IDENTIFIER)
-
Click on the
letters CPU at the top of the CPU column so that it sorts by highest CPU
usage, then note the PID of the SVCHOST that is causing the issue.
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Click START, RUN,
CMD to start a command interpreter box
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Type
tasklist /svc
to display a list of services being run. Scroll through the list
until you find the offending PID. You may also find
tasklist /FI "PID eq
processID"
useful. Below is a screen shot of my tasklist:
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Start disabling the services from
the SVCHOST which is consuming your CPU. Keep a TASK MANAGER open
on the PERFORMACE tab and watch for the CPU to drop to normal (near
zero) as you shut down services. For instance, in the case above, if PID
1056 were taking the CPU, I would launch SERVICES.MSC, stop the BITS
service; wait 15 seconds and see what happens the the CPU. If that did
not solve the issue, I would disable the COMPUTER BROWSER service, wait
15 seconds and see what happens to the CPU, if that did not work I would
disable the CERTIFICATE SERVICES, wait 15 seconds, and see what happens
to the CPU...
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Once you have determined which
service is consuming your CPU, you can google the hell out of it to
determine the real issue.
For more information
read:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314056
http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-US/Help/057580a1-7002-4f43-9240-a74f42cb05c91033.mspx#EV
http://www.daniweb.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1393&highlight=svchost+takes+100
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