{"id":796,"date":"2013-10-15T16:28:43","date_gmt":"2013-10-15T21:28:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/?p=796"},"modified":"2015-04-27T08:34:49","modified_gmt":"2015-04-27T13:34:49","slug":"windows-2003-and-high-cpu-usage-in-svchost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/windows-2003-and-high-cpu-usage-in-svchost\/","title":{"rendered":"Windows 2003 and High CPU Usage in Svchost"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n\tWindows 2003 is getting a bit long in the tooth, but we've got a number of customers that are still happily using it, and for good reason \u2014 it's a solid work horse of an OS.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tWe've recently come upon an issue where some of our 2003 servers in the lab were pegging the CPU at 100%. \u00a0Investigation revealed svchost was the culprit. \u00a0But there are lots of svchost processes, what is it really doing? \u00a0There is a cool trick to figure it out:\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tRun: tasklist.exe \/svc \/fi \"imagename eq svchost.exe\"\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t<span style=\"line-height: 1.6em;\">You'll see someething like:<\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t<a href=\"\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/tasklist.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"tasklist\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-797\" height=\"189\" src=\"\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/tasklist-300x189.png\" width=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/tasklist-300x189.png 300w, https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/tasklist.png 677w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\"><\/a>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tHere you can see the PID associated with those svchost processes, and which service is running in each. \u00a0Look in Task Manager to get the PID, compare to this list, and you've now narrowed down which service is hogging the CPU.\n<\/p>\n<h2>\n\tHigh CPU Usage in Automatic Update Service<br>\n<\/h2>\n<p>\n\tIn our case, it turns out we've run into a known issue where the Automatic Update service goes a little crazy with CPU usage. \u00a0It will drop down after finishing a scan, but will jump up again the next day.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tSince this is a known issue, there is also a fix.\u00a0 This page\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/support.microsoft.com\/kb\/927891\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">http:\/\/support.microsoft.com\/kb\/927891<img class=\"extlink-icon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/external-links-nofollow-open-in-new-tab-favicon\/images\/extlink.png\"><\/a>\u00a0lists two patches to install. \u00a0After running and installing these (and one was already installed in our case), we've not had the problem since \ud83d\ude42\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t<strong>UPDATE:<\/strong> Elohir and Byron_K below mentioned a new patch that seems to fix this problem even in cases where the previous fix hasn't worked. \u00a0A big thank you! for sharing it.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t<a href=\"http:\/\/technet.microsoft.com\/en-us\/security\/bulletin\/ms13-097\" rel=\"nofollow\" style=\"line-height: 1.6em;\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/technet.microsoft.com\/en-us\/security\/bulletin\/ms13-097<img class=\"extlink-icon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/external-links-nofollow-open-in-new-tab-favicon\/images\/extlink.png\"><\/a>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u00a0\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t<a href=\"http:\/\/www.twitter.com\/home?status=RT:%20@poweradmn%20Windows%202003%20and%20High%20CPU%20Usage%20in%20Svchost%20http:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/windows-2003-and-high-cpu-usage-in-svchost\/?ref=blog\" rel=\"nofollow\" style=\"\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Tweet this\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1028\" height=\"75\" src=\"\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/tweet-this-article-button-large-300x75.png\" style=\"\" title=\"\" width=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/tweet-this-article-button-large-300x75.png 300w, https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/tweet-this-article-button-large.png 310w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\"><img class=\"extlink-icon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/external-links-nofollow-open-in-new-tab-favicon\/images\/extlink.png\"><\/a>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t<a href=\"https:\/\/plus.google.com\/share?url={\/blog\/windows-2003-and-high-cpu-usage-in-svchost\/?ref=blog}\" rel=\"nofollow\" style=\"\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Share on Google+\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1053\" height=\"75\" src=\"\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/google-plus-this-article-button-large2-300x75.png\" style=\"\" title=\"\" width=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/google-plus-this-article-button-large2-300x75.png 300w, https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/google-plus-this-article-button-large2.png 310w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\"><img class=\"extlink-icon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/external-links-nofollow-open-in-new-tab-favicon\/images\/extlink.png\"><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Windows 2003 is getting a bit long in the tooth, but we&#8217;ve got a number of customers that are still happily using it, and for good reason \u2014 it&#8217;s a solid work horse of an OS. We&#8217;ve recently come upon an issue where some of our 2003 servers in the lab were pegging the CPU [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":797,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5,6,9,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general-it","category-how-to","category-tech","category-technical","category-windows"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=796"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3577,"href":"https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796\/revisions\/3577"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}