PhoneExperienceHost.exe high CPU usage when pc idle

Anonymous
2022-11-12T15:18:33+00:00

Hi,

When I come back to my laptop and it's gone into idle mode (screen off) I can hear the fans running fast, but as soon as I move the mouse the fans die off. I tried to figure out for a while what was happening and eventually set up perfmon to record what processes were running. I discovered that runs at 50% CPU continuously while the machine is in idle which is ridiculous for something that shouldn't be doing anything much (I'd upload a screenshot but there doesn't seem to be an option anywhere). Looking at details in Task Manager the PhoneExperienceHost.exe process has used twice as much CPU in total than any other app, even though I haven't used it in the foreground.

I do use Phone link to connect to my phone, but it's in the background (system tray icon only) and shouldn't be doing anything most of the time.

There's nothing related in Event viewer and I can't see anything in Scheduler which might trigger it.

I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling the Phone Link software.

The machine says it is up to date for patching.

I've searched for anything related to this issue and found nothing helpful so either it's only my machine, or other people don't realise it's happening as it only happens when they can't look at it!

Any ideas on how to fix this so it stops using my power (obviously uninstalling is not an option)? (TBH though, I expect it's something built into the software and can only be fixed by MS)

Thanks,

Jon W

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Connect Phone and PC

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

0 comments

55 answers

Sort by: Most helpful
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. Anonymous
    2023-02-10T03:50:49+00:00

    To date: I have had only one incident of a CPU-hogging phonelink dll. My "good luck" may be due to my never using its front-end app, either in its previous incarnation as "Your Phone" or as "Phone Link". (Correction: I have never knowingly used this app. I have some vague recollections of pop-up boxes appearing occasionally, annoying me with their invitation to try out some feature or another that I didn't want... and maybe my dismissal of such a box had put this dll into an incompletely-tested state?)

    I will consider this dll to be an ongoing risk of overheating in my Win11 laptop... especially when I close the lid (rather than shutting it down more emphatically with an explicit "Shut Down") before putting it into a carrying case ... where it just might someday get really really hot. Yeah I know there are thermal cutout safeguards in BIOS but even so it is a worry. Here's hoping that the QA team at Windows can localise this defect and repair it sooner, rather than later!

    Was this answer helpful?

    1 person found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  2. Anonymous
    2023-02-01T21:54:54+00:00

    Also when you close the app from taskbar, process not terminated (and when your PC go in idle, it will use CPU again) and you must start task manager to terminate process "PhoneExperienceHost.exe"

    In Process Explorer you can see that thread named "dwmcorei.dll!LiftedCompositionEngine_Initialize" loads your CPU![Image](https://learn-attachment.microsoft.com/api/attachments/a472b581-07f4-4480-bc8e-9a91a97be3b8?platform=QnA

    By the way, another strange thing is that this dll file names "dwmcorei.dll" has version 22622, although the PC has build 22621 (not downgraded from 22622/22623)Image

    Was this answer helpful?

    1 person found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  3. Anonymous
    2023-02-01T19:07:31+00:00

    Also when you close the app from taskbar, process not terminated (and when your PC go in idle, it will use CPU again) and you must start task manager to terminate process "PhoneExperienceHost.exe"

    In Process Explorer you can see that thread named "dwmcorei.dll!LiftedCompositionEngine_Initialize" loads your CPU![Image](https://learn-attachment.microsoft.com/api/attachments/a472b581-07f4-4480-bc8e-9a91a97be3b8?platform=QnA

    Hi, thanks for this. I haven't had another incident of my laptop overheating from PhoneExperienceHost since a week ago (when I took my ProcExp screenshot). I didn't try to kill off PhoneExperienceHost using Task Manager at that time, instead my first response (after taking the screenshots) was to "Restart" the laptop. That was sufficient to clear my problem and I moved on. I am *very* wary of killing off Windows processes -- especially ones whose threads can gain kernel privilege -- and would do so only if it was my last-hope method for gaining enough system resource to save my currently-opened files to disk.

    It looks like you're running Process Explorer from a command line. I'm using the GUI from https://download.sysinternals.com/files/SysinternalsSuite.zip.  Now that I have a current version (I had been using v16.21 of 20 Oct 2018), I'm able to see kernel time in the process summary window. Hmmm... a thread that's in a busy loop, waiting on a flag that requires kernel privilege to read, "should" poll that flag at a low frequency -- I'd hope no more than once every ten seconds. Privilege-escalations and privilege de-escalations are expensive, and a dll with a polling loop running continuously at kernel privilege also seems a bad idea to me. Ideally this flag would be recoded as a semaphore-wait in the kernel with a callback hooked to its signal.... but that might require a major recoding of PhoneExperienceHost? Anyway I'll leave the diagnosis & repair to the Windows QA team! But... if I ever again have an overheating laptop from PhoneExperienceHost I'll take some screenshots from v17.02 Process Explorer, using the following as my baseline for a non-problematic PhoneExperienceHost:

    PhoneExperienceHost.exe is a long way down the list of processes when I sort them by total context switches during the current session of Windows11:

    Was this answer helpful?

    1 person found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  4. Anonymous
    2023-01-17T16:21:51+00:00

    Same problem here. PhoneExperienceHost.exe uses CPU intensively when display goes off due to inactivity.

    Something is totally off, and it's either mining software built-in into the Phone Link which uses CPU instead of GPU for some reason, or just a nasty bug which should be fixed asap in sake of nature resources saving and reducing humanity CO2 footprint.

    Win 11 22H2

    Phone Link 1.22102.229.0

    Was this answer helpful?

    1 person found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  5. Anonymous
    2023-01-01T03:35:14+00:00

    I set up phone link then found high idle issue after monitor goes into power save. Process Explorer CPU graph showed PhoneExperienceHost constant 10% CPU usage whilst PC was idle. Went to uninstall phone link but won't allow me to, had to use powershell commands. Using Windows 11 21H2

    Was this answer helpful?

    1 person found this answer helpful.
    0 comments