Windows – Why/how is svchost.exe using 6.5GB of memory

memorymemory leakssvchostwindows 7windows-services

What is going on here? I have almost nothing running.

6.5/8

By almost nothing, I mean Firefox, and some background network applications that are entirely passive and would never use this much memory.

Related services: UxSms, TrkWks, SysMain, PcaSvc, Netman, CscService, AudioEndpointBuilder, TabletInputService

The only thing I can think of is that I was running Virtualbox with Ubuntu for a little while but that is limited to 2GB of memory and it's no longer running.

Edit: I am most interested in the question of why/how? Likely a leak somewhere but given the services listed above, do any stand out as being a potential culprit?

Best Answer

svchost.exe is the process that runs all your Windows services. One of them has gone mad apparently. Right-click on svchost.exe and select "Go to Service(s)". That will tell you which service it is, and you can use Services Manager to restart or disable it if you don't need it.

For a better description with nice screenshots check out:

Per your update, you can check out a couple of those services:

  1. CscService: Related to the "offline folders" feature of Windows. Do you use that?
  2. UxSms: Related to Desktop Window Manager. Try disabling Aero, see if the problem occurs.
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