Help! Something is eating half my CPU cycles! I ran Task manager and discovered that it was on of the iterations of Service host is eating up about 50% of my CPU. Tried killing the process, but it kept coming back. I did a little googling and installed Process Explorer, which at least allowed me to look inside that particular iteration of Service host and here's the list... Application Information - appinfo.dll Background intelligent Transfer Service - qmgr.dll Computer Browser - browser.dll Extensible Authentication Protocol - eapsvc.dll Group policy client - gpsvc.dll IKE and AuthIP IPsec keying modules - ikeext.dll IP Helper - iphlpsvc.dll Lanman server - srvsvc.dl User profile Service - profsvc.dll Task Scheduler - schedsvc.dll System Event notification Service - sens.dll Shell Hardware Setection - shsvcs.dll Themes - themeservice.dll Windows management instrumentation - WMlsvc.dll Windows Update - wuaueng.dll Running Windows 7. Where do I go from here?
there are lots of guides on using process explorer etc to find out what's actually happening. However, it'll probably be a buggy bit of code you've got loaded (try updating drivers etc.. and then try upgrading your OS ) (also try process monitor to see if the application is stuck doing something crazy like trying to read a file constantly..)
From taskmanager right click the svchost that causing the high CPU usage and select go to services, from there try stopping and starting each service in turn and checking to see if one of them stops the high CPU usage. EDIT: Forgot to say you'll probably also want to do a virus and root kit scan if you've not done so already.
Looks like it was Windows Update causing it, though aside from killing the process, I'm not sure how to prevent it from recurring. I currently have EU turned off to avoid the Win10 nag screens, but that doesn't seem to be keeping it from starting on boot, getting something sideways in it's throat and choking the computers performance.
If i had to guess I'd say you're missing one of the updates for Windows update, although seeing as there's been so many of those it's hard to disingenuous between normal updates and those intended to get people to upgrade to 10. The most obvious one could be KB3102810 but without knowing what updates you've hidden, if any, it's hard to say for certain, have you tried checking the updates you've hidden, if any, against a list of known updates to avoid and only restoring those not on the list?
