


The Windows Update service (wuauserv) is the service that most often causes the svchost.exe high CPU usage issue. The takeaway here is that if you installed any new programs or made any system changes, especially security-related ones, right before the issue began, reverting that change is very likely to help. The culprit is most likely different in your case. As it turns out, the new firewall configurations made network-related services such as Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) malfunction, which ultimately showed up as high CPU usage by Service Host. The same applies to system configurations as well.įor instance, some users reported high CPU usage after making changes to the firewall settings. This is because the program is conflicting with some background services.

Often, after installing a new program such as an antivirus, users notice increased CPU usage from Service Host. For such scenarios, we recommend applying other solutions as appropriate from the ones listed below. In some cases, the problematic service may be a critical system component that you can’t or don’t want to disable, like Windows Update, for instance. Stop the service, change the Startup type to Disabled, and press OK.Locate the service in the Services utility and double-click it.Right-click the service and select Open Services.If the problematic service is not essential, you can disable it with the following steps: In the Processes tab, you should be able to identify which specific service is causing the high CPU usage issue. Press CTRL + Shift + Esc to launch the Task Manager and click on More Details if necessary to switch to Expanded View. It will likely restart again and accumulate CPU usage eventually, but this should still buy you some time for troubleshooting. Here are some common reasons why the services themselves are not working as intended:īefore we start, if the CPU usage is so high that your system is crashing, you can end the problematic process via the Task Manager. This problem is often reported with services like Windows Update or SysMain. As stated, a background service malfunctioning is what most often causes this issue.
