How to identify what "Service Host" is causing CPU usage

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Batman

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#196518 3-Jun-2016 05:56

I am trying to eek out every minute I can when the laptop [Win 10 Pro] is on battery.

One of the things I came across is this thing ... "Service Host: Local System". one of 16 things is burning up my battery ... but how do I tell which one? I've done virus scanning on Avast boot scan and comes back clean.

Batman

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#1564689 3-Jun-2016 05:58

Btw it's 10% of a quad core i7 Haswell ... that's a lot of juice. the MP3 player only uses 0.05% (cycles between 0.0% and 0.1%)

mrdrifter

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#1564727 3-Jun-2016 08:12

Have you tried Process Monitor? https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/processmonitor.aspx?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396 This may allow you to identify the exact process.

trig42

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#1564775 3-Jun-2016 09:25

I'll place 10 cents on it being Windows Update.

wasabi2k

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#1564777 3-Jun-2016 09:28

from a command prompt, tasklist /svc

will show you the PID and any hosted services for the svchost.exe process

You will need to go to the details view of task manager, select columns and add PID to the list.

Match the PID of the high CPU process with the PID from tasklist - you will have a list of suspect services.

timmmay

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#1564822 3-Jun-2016 09:51

joker97:

Btw it's 10% of a quad core i7 Haswell ... that's a lot of juice. the MP3 player only uses 0.05% (cycles between 0.0% and 0.1%)

When I was at university, with a 486, a 128kbps mp3 would take the entire CPU to decode, sometimes it skipped. Those new fangled pentiums were the bomb and did it much more easily.

linw

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#1564831 3-Jun-2016 10:00

wasabi2k:

from a command prompt, tasklist /svc

will show you the PID and any hosted services for the svchost.exe process

You will need to go to the details view of task manager, select columns and add PID to the list.

Match the PID of the high CPU process with the PID from tasklist - you will have a list of suspect services.

Very useful info - thanks.

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darylblake

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#1564833 3-Jun-2016 10:01

trig42:

I'll place 10 cents on it being Windows Update.

Yeh it will have a lot of disk activity on the C drive too. Might be hard to notice on an SSD. Id probably place more than 10 cents on this though.

Batman

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#1564954 3-Jun-2016 12:09

trig42:

I'll place 10 cents on it being Windows Update.

I doubt it. Zero network, zero disk use. But only if those are accurate however. I have no idea. All I know is if it didn't do that my battery life could double!\

Thanks guys I'll take a look when I have time.