[Windows 10 Fix] Why Too Many Svchost.exe (Service Host) Process Running in Task Manager
If you are using Windows 10 operating system in your computer, try following:
Open Task Manager using Ctrl+Shift+Esc hotkey or by right-clicking on Taskbar and selecting “Task Manager” option. Now click on “Details” tab, scroll down a little and you’ll be amazed by the number of svchost.exe processes running in your system.
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You may find 50+ svchost.exe processes running in Task Manager and you’ll start wondering what thing is causing so many svchost.exe processes running in your device? You might also think that these processes are the actual reason behind your computer is running slow since a few days. Right?
Related: Master Tutorial to Make Windows 10 Super Fast
Actually no! There is no need to worry if too many svchost.exe process running in your Windows 10 computer. Its absolutely normal and a feature by design. Its not any issue or problem in your computer.
Svchost.exe is known as “Service Host” or “Host Process for Windows Services“. Its a system process which is used by several Windows services since the release of Windows 2000 operating system. In previous Windows versions, several similar services were combined into a single svchost.exe process to reduce overall system resources consumption. But since the release of Windows 10 Creators Update, this behavior has been changed. Now in newer Windows 10 versions, the services which were grouped in previous Windows versions, are separated and run in their own Svchost process.
Related: Check changes found in Windows 10 build 14942 in our Changelog topic.
This change has been implemented to increase system stability, reliability and security. When services were grouped in a single svchost.exe process, one service crash could affect the other services running in the same process group. Now when services are separated and using their own host process, it improves the stability and reliability of Windows 10 machine.
There is one condition! The services will use separate svchost.exe process only if your Windows 10 machine has 3.5+ GB of RAM. On systems with 3.5 GB or less RAM, the services will be grouped in single svchost.exe process similar to older Windows versions.
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Also some Windows services are still grouped such as Remote Procedure Call and RPC Endpoint Mapper services are always grouped. Similarly, Windows Firewall and Base Filtering Engine services are always grouped no matter how much RAM your computer has.
So you see several instances of svchost.exe process run in Windows 10 to improve stability of your computer and its not an issue at all.
But still you are worried about the number of svchost.exe process, you can disable this new feature and force Windows 10 to group similar services into single svchost.exe process like previous Windows versions.
Microsoft provides a method for experts to turn off the separate svchost.exe process use by each Windows service. With the help of this method, you can minimize the number of svchost.exe processes running in your Windows 10 machine.
This method requires editing of Windows Registry. If you also want to reduce number of svchost.exe processes running in Task Manager, following steps will help you:
1. Press WIN+R keys together to launch RUN dialog box. Now type regedit and press Enter. It’ll open Registry Editor.
2. Now go to following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control
3. In right-side pane, look for a DWORD SvcHostSplitThresholdInKB. Its value is set to 380000 by default.
Now you need to set its value equal or greater than the amount of RAM (in KB) installed in your computer. For example, if your computer has 8 GB of RAM, you’ll change the DWORD value to 8388608 or larger.
8 GB = 8×1024 MB = 8x1024x1024 KB = 8388608 KB
So double-click on SvcHostSplitThresholdInKB DWORD and change its value to 8388608
NOTE: If your computer has different amount of RAM, set the DWORD value accordingly. You can check how much RAM does your computer has, by right-clicking on Start button and selecting System option.
4. After changing the value, close Registry Editor and restart your computer to take effects.
After reboot, check the Details tab in Task Manager and the number of svchost.exe process will be very less as shown in following screenshot:
PS: In future, if you decide to restore the feature to use separate svchost.exe process, restore the default value 380000 of SvcHostSplitThresholdInKB DWORD in Registry Editor.
BONUS TIP 1:
You can also set individual service to split or not. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services key and navigate to desired service key. Now in right-side pane, create SvcHostSplitDisable DWORD and set its value to 1 to disable splitting.
BONUS TIP 2:
If you don’t want to use the above mentioned registry tweak, you can still reduce number of svchost.exe process running in your computer by disabling some unnecessary services using following exclusive tutorial:
Doing this will increase the speed of my system?
^^ You won’t notice any big difference.
Thank i prefer grouped service it easy to see other process.
Are you sure 380000 is really 3.5 GB? I thought it’s measured in KB.
Pay attention that you have to set the Decimal value in Registry Editor.
However, this method does not work for me. I set a very large value for SvcHostSplitThresholdInKB settings but windows still show many svchost services on my laptop after restart.
There’s an error in the screenshot showing the edited registry value. Instead of setting it to –
decimal 8388608 (which is 8*1024*1024) it’s been set to 0x08388608 which is decimal 137922056 (which is 131*1024*1024).
Dang ty it helps me with memory and cpu usage. it totally helped on windows version 1709.
good day ill like ife you can give more pointers so that we can this windows 10 pro from updating every 2 or 3 days really and anouther thing that i sawd in windows no matter what you do ife you like disabled the service’s thats running in the background it uhm goes back on like ypou never disabled it thats for me very stressed couse i cant even play even one simple low graphic’s game then the holle windows wil like really be not responding and this matter ife been trubbeld now for like 1year i wil really be happy ife somone could just give me like uhm some tips or ways to stop this background programmes and service’s thats killing the holle pc … The laste thing are no matter what i do ife i open task maniger and goes to start up theres like (18) apps and programs thats running and when i stop them and disabeled them not even long then iets alle back like it where ..and the other matter are the (USERS) there’s really like 99 apps and stuff opend that are draing my DISK 100% ale the time and my memory 61% really then there’s not ever 2 apps opend on the desktop and nothings running in the background
I followed the steps but still there are many svchost.exe running.
I will try on 1903 and see if there is a difference. 🙂 Thanks for the post btw
on 1903 Fresh install, I changed the value to decimal 16777216.
Results: Proccess count from 70 to just 21
Ram usage from 1.9Gb to 1.7Gb…
That’s a great results and amazing… thanks a lot bro.
All very nice, but I did not buy my expensive computer to run svchost processes or waste memory on them; I bought it to run applications that I care about.
In agreement with James Purdon.. my computer is an i7 machine with 16Gb of RAM and the processor has a benchmark of almost 10,000. So it wasn’t a slow machine and WAS expensive.
After I upgraded my RAM from 8Gb to 16Gb Windows immediately took another Gigabyte of my new memory without any changes to my system or programs leaving me with only 13Gb !
As far as I can see Microsoft just keeps bloating Win10 and adding stuff without giving us the option to remove it making our previous fast computers slow and a pain in the a*rse to use !
This morning I had to wait 20 minutes on my fast Pc while windows FORCED updates on me meaning I lost an auction I was bidding on. Microsoft are making the already disliked Win 10 O/S even more disliked and unfriendly with their constant meddling.
I do not believe any O/S needs updates almost every day and suspect there is far more going on than ‘just’ updates.. and in the 20 minutes ‘stolen’ from me today I’m sure it was plenty of time to scan my whole system.
Microsoft’s geeks are probably sitting around racking their brains trying to think up something they can add to bloat our systems more just because they’ve got nothing better to do!.. Windows 10 (and Pro which I have on another machine) are the most annoying waste of my computers speed.. memory and my money !
Time to get it off my computers and use Linux Mint again !
will this help me reduce the memory utilization used by the Windows host? i had 13.6 gb consumption.
This made my PC start using about 1.5 GB less ram on startup, thx
I have adopted the suggestion please let me know for an 8 GB RAM when I put 8388608
which I should click hexadecimal or decimal?
Fixed my problem. Windows 10 21H2. This PC was incredible slow to populate if it populated at all. If I typed a drive letter (C: etc) in the address bar it opened the drive fine. After applying this registry fix to group the svchost processes This PC opens and populated instantly.
Many thanks
There is no need to calculate your memory into KB. Setting SvcHostSplitThresholdInKB to 0 (zero) also works.
Considering major upgrades, it might be suggested to set SvcHostSplitDisable.
Excellent fix! Thank you kindly for this 🙂
Excellent Fix, Thank you, you solved my problem
Wow, I Had 80 Services In SVCHOST// Now i Just Have 38, Amazing Improvement.. I Feel This Great