Originally published at: How to Fix High CPU and RAM Usage by svchost.exe (netsvcs)
Many Windows users experience a bizarre and highly menacing problem where a specific process named svchost.exe (netsvcs) starts requisitioning and using more and more RAM after the affected computer boots and fails to let go of the RAM regardless of how much it accumulates. What is svchost.exe? Service Host or svchost.exe is an important Windows…
it looks like it just needed to finish installing the updates and processing them which consumed the CPU. After the upgrade, there were no updates to be installed which is why it came back to normal.
Windows Update was the problem. Disabling wauserv did the trick. My cpu usage was running at around 50% and the fan was roaring away even when computer was doing nothing. Now the cpu is running at 3% to 10% and the fan silent. Many, many thanks!
Worked. Now my CPU is at 0.2% instead of 50% while idle. Wish i found this 2 days ago to fix it instead of wasting time doing worthless things other people say. Like installing 10’s of other garbage packages from Microsoft
Many thanks. After reading all kinds of unsuccessful solutions, came here for one last attempt before ditching the laptop. Solutions 5 and 6, now working fine.
Vista.
Nope… not back to normal yet. I let it run for 3 hours until my laptop overheated and shut down, wow, never knew that was possible… must be a safety mechanism to stop cooking the MB I suppose. It just hangs on updating and NEVER succeeds.
I’m with you Pete. Had no troubles at all for many years until just a few days ago, and its been driving me crazy. I realized it was a Microsoft program for sure because when I restored my box to an image 2 months ago, which virtually wipes everything, after a couple of hours it all starts again. Maywarebytes and paid version of NIS finds no virus.
It (Solution 5) worked for me!
Disabling Windows Update did the trick also. Thanks for the article, very useful.
for me the update from september did NOT solve the problem alone… in July 2015 my notebook litterally refused to download any more updates and search for updates took forever. At least after one entire week it was still searching. So I downloaded the patch KB3172605 (thats a 30 MB download )from september but my laptop continued to run one core at 100%. But it re-established the ability to finish the search for updates wiithin a reasonable time, I’d guess 3 hours and there wasn’t even an update required.
Thanks! Windows Update was eating up half my cpu.
Ditto. Thanks. WUAUSERV was eating 50% of my CPU constantly.
I was able to stop the Windows Update service to reduce my CPU usage but each time I activated it to download updates it would still max out my CPU. I finally just updated to Windows 10 which solved the problem–and makes me wonder if the issue might have been created to get users to upgrade…
Thanks for providing the solution for the windows update problem. I’ve been struggling with this problem for months. Now I just have to put the reminder on my calendar to update.
It seems that solution 1 works for me! thanks 
Ditto what Rokko308, emeskaykay, and Ken posted. Worked like a charm. Many, many thanks.
Thank you!!! Baie Dankie!! Siyabone!!Nke liboa!! Zikomo!! Ashanti!! (sorry about some of the spelling I can only pronounce some of them).
This used ALL the RAM it just keeps on growing until 100% is used, so I had to be quick to search for this help. Disabling the Windows Update did the trick, and I remember now that I turned the auto update on last week :(. What a waste of time!
disabling windows update service reduced the cpu usage from 25% to 0%. Thanks.
Kevin, Your recommendations how to deal with high CPU usage were right on target! Followed your solution 3 and 4 which have seemed to solve this pesky problem. Many thanks!