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

Question

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?

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

svchost basically lies under all system services. It's rather hard to find out which process is actually running in svchost. You'll need that info to determine what's running inside.

See this tutorial