I have noticed on several Windows 7 machines that Windows updates and Windows driver search can cause svchost.exe to consume excessive amount of RAM.
In the case of Windows updates, it seems that all the updates get downloaded to RAM, cached, and then you experience the joy of installing them while the machine is operational, and again at reboot. I have these machines set to never download, update, or notify the user of updates, because svchost.exe, TrustedInstaller.exe, and wau…exe all go haywire under any other setting. svchost.exe will still consume the massive amounts of RAM under any of other the options for Windows updates. Therefore, I now manually check and install updates once a week.
in the case of Windows driver search, when you plug in a new device, Windows will consume an excessive amount of RAM while it's probing, analyzing, and downloading a driver for the device. The most prominent example is when I attempted to connect a 3TB drive to a machine. My laptop was not able to connect to the device. It was a Core i7 with 4GB of RAM. I plugged the drive into a desktop with 16GB of RAM. I don't recall if this machine had crazy RAM usage trying to cess out the drive. However, the laptop got an upgrade to 12GB of RAM, so I connected the drive to it. RAM usage for svchost spiked to 3GB. I've seen similar, but not as extreme, behavior almost any time I plug in a new device.
These machines are all Core i7s of some variety with 12GB of RAM and up. Not light specs, though maybe that's only average for 2015?
I have researched this phenomenon before, and while I have found many people asking similar questions, I have not found solutions to the problem.
Is there a way to mitigate this behavior?
Relevant links:
Windows 7 SVCHOST consumes copius RAM when searching for drivers
Windows 7 checking for Windows Updates cause memory use to blow up
Automatic driver search & update on Windows?
Windows 7 driver search woefully slow
How do I troubleshoot high 'svchost.exe' usage in Windows 7?
How I analyzed svchost high CPU utilization problem
Best Answer
This is a known issue with Windows Update. Microsoft fixed this issue with the update KB3050265 in June 2015:
Windows Update Client for Windows 7: June 2015
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3050265
Download and install the update
Windows6.1-KB3050265-x64.msu.Windows 8 also suffers this issue, but here the fix is to update to Windows 8.1, where the issue was first fixed before back porting the fix to Windows 7.
Microsoft released a new WindowsUpdate Client Update to fix the slow Update searching/Installation.
Installing and searching for updates is slow and high CPU usage occurs in Windows 7
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3102810
Download:
32Bit: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=fcd6bf5d-f004-4ca3-aa7e-1de462b91dd0
64Bit: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=4fe566bd-31b1-4413-8c4c-412b52533669
Try this new Update and look if it speeds up the installation of Updates.