Windows – svchost consuming more than 50% CPU all the time in windows 7

cpu usagewindowswindows 7windows-vista

I'm using windows 7 ultimate.

svchost containing

  1. DCOM Server Process Launcher
  2. Plug and Play
  3. Power

services is consuming more than 50% of CPU for most of the time. I found this blog post:
http://blog.hansmelis.be/2007/06/17/windows-vista-long-delay-when-switching-songs-in-media-player/

That process is associated with two
services: DCOM Server Process Launcher
and Plug and Play. For the Vulcans
among us, all logic stops there for a
second. What do those two services
have to do with WMP? The answer is
provided by Vista's new audio engine.
The new engine supports several audio
"enhancements". But for the
enhancements to work, the engine needs
to determine if your hardware is up to
the task. And when does it check that?
Each time a sound output device is
accessed. That's pretty nice if you
can do a hot swap of sound hardware,
but I don't see me doing that anytime
soon. Anyways, it does provide us with
the link to the correct service
because checking hardware is done by
the "Plug and Play" service.

One might think that deactivating each
enhancement would solve the problem,
but that's wishful thinking. The
configuration of the enhancements is
located in the properties of the sound
hardware. When opening the tab, I
found out that no enhancements were
active. Hmmm… so why does it check
the hardware? Well, it does that in
case you actually enable an
enhancement. To completely stop the
hardware checking, you have to tick
the box labelled Disable all
enhancements
. As soon as you do that,
Vista finally understands you don't
want to use them

buts thats for vista. Is it the same case with windows 7 too? and I couldn't find any "Disable all enhancements" in my controlpanel>sounds (mmsys.cpl). Where can I find this option in windows 7?

How to solve this?

Best Answer

  1. Figure out the Process ID (PID) from the Task Manager.
  2. Run this command from a console to find out which services it might be:

    tasklist /svc /fi "PID EQ 1000"
    (where 1000 is the PID)

Or just run Process Explorer, which will drill down into each svchost.

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