The taskhost.exe application consumes 50-60% of the average cpu usage

Anonymous
2010-02-10T09:05:52+00:00

The taskhost.exe application(C:\Windows\System 32) consumes 50-60% of the average cpu usage even when the system is idle  and no processes are being run.

Will deleting this application make my computer unstable?

How can  i permanently stop the process ?

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Windows update

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Anonymous
2010-02-11T04:26:39+00:00

Hey Abhishek,

The taskhost.exe is a Task Host which is a generic Host Process for Windows 7 32-bit Services. The full path to this file should be shown in TUT as **C:\Windows\System32\Taskhost.exe.**TASKHOST is a generic process which acts as a host for processes that run from DLLs rather than EXEs. At startup TASKHOST checks the Services portion of the Registry to construct a list of DLL-based services that it needs to load, and then loads them. There can be many instances of TASKHOST running, as there will be one instance of TASKHOST for every DLL-based service or grouping of services (the grouping of services is determined by the programmers who wrote the services in question).

Since this is an integral part of the operating system, I wouldn’t suggest you to delete it.

However, for the high CPU consumption issue, please use Performance Monitor to view performance data either in real time or from a log file.

The new Resource Monitor lets you view detailed real-time information about hardware resources (CPU, disk, network, and memory) and system resources (including handles and modules) in use by the operating system, services, and running applications. In addition, you can use Resource Monitor to stop processes, start and stop services, analyze process deadlocks, view thread wait chains, and identify processes locking files.

A closer look:

View CPU utilization and other performance information**http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/View-CPU-utilization-and-other-performance-information**

See details about your computer's performance using Task Manager**http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/See-details-about-your-computers-performance-using-Task-Manager**

Last but not the least, perform virus scan to remove any trace of infection on your computer. If your antivirus database is not updated, please update the same and then run the scan. If you don't have antivirus installed, you may opt to download Microsoft Security Essentials on your computer and run it.

**http://www.microsoft.com/Security\_Essentials/**

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Shinmila H - Microsoft Support

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  1. Anonymous
    2011-04-18T00:56:54+00:00

    To all you who persue this devil...Thank you MS just appears not to care very much after you pay....  I also have this issue and have had long problems w/ freezes due to one voltage setting done by system.  16 months of misery...........  Thank you all again.

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  2. Anonymous
    2011-04-11T14:05:07+00:00

    Thank You Man!!!!

    That solved my prob too!!!

    I was gettin crazy with that thing!!

    Thanks once more!!

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  3. Anonymous
    2010-07-11T23:51:28+00:00

    Shinmila, i have the same problem and i have to go and end process of the task host. its crazy to have to do this every few hours. i have all the anti virus running and there are no problems, just taskhost consuming all the CPU and grinding the computer to a halt

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  4. Anonymous
    2010-03-20T02:41:03+00:00

    I am experiencing a very similar situation.

    • clean install of Win 7 Ultimate 64bit
    • duo core machine
    • machine has 8G ram   (Lenovo W500)

    Taskhost.exe will sporadically take up to 50+% of the processor.  I can kill it it and the machine returns to normal.

    I notice the taskhost.exe is running under the user LOCAL SERVICE. 

    I have run updated scans with security essentails, malwarebytes, adaware, spybot... nothing reported by any of these. 

    Some more information that may help - when I look in the resource monitor -

    Screen clipping taken: 3/19/2010 9:29 PM

    the image above didn't paste with all the information I wanted - but there is a reference to some files in

    c:\windows\serviceprofiles\localservice\appdata\

    IE5 - internet content files

    Not sure of any this sheds more light - but thought I would throw it out there.

    My hunch is that there is something in the folders below the path listed above that the virus scanners aren't getting access to and so not identifying malware, etc

    Also the type column in the resource monitor is showing a type of "mutant"....

    any ideas?   This machine shouldn't be slowing down like this...  Any help appreciated

    thanks

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