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High CPU usage, Fan Blasting (Service Host?)

kozak79

Active Member
Noticed recently that my SP3 i7 256gb has been running hot and fan blasting all the time. Checked task manager and this is what I found, 20 minutes after rebooting and not using the surface:

Service Host: Local Service (No Network) (4)
Base Filtering Engine
CoreMessaging
Diagnostic Policy Service
Windows Firewall

CPU 75%
Memory 455 MB
Disk 1.4 MB/s
Network 0 Mbps

What the hell is going on???
 

GreyFox7

Super Moderator
Staff member
Can you give the CPU, Disk, and Network percentages for each of those?
Base Filtering Engine:
A service that controls the operation of the Windows Filtering Platform. It performs the following tasks.
  • Accepts filters and other configuration settings for the platform.
  • Reports the current state of the system, including statistics.
  • Enforces the security model for accepting configuration in the platform.
    For example, a local administrator can add filters but other users can only view them.
  • Plumbs configuration settings to other modules in the system.
    For example, IPsec negotiation polices go to IKE/AuthIP keying modules, filters go to the filter engine.
Core Messaging:
This section presents core specifications used to formulate messages in the Web services architecture: XML, SOAP, and WS-Addressing [WS-Addressing]. Web services rely on XML for the basic underlying data model, SOAP for the message processing and data model, and WS-Addressing for addressing services and identifying messages independent of transport.

Diagnostic Policy Service:
The Diagnostic Policy service enables problem detection, troubleshooting, and resolution for Windows components. If this service is stopped, diagnostics will no longer function. If this service is disabled, any services that explicitly depend on it will fail to start.


I'd be inclined to run Malwarebytes to check for malware on your system, possibly a botnet ... however this may be way off base given very little info. it's also possible the activity is external to your SP3 and its defending against incoming traffic so check other systems on the same network as well. As far as the 0% network traffic im not sure how that counter works... i.e. if it only counts accepted or sent traffic vs dropped packets that got filtered.

A Trace with Network Monitor might be useful or may show nothing... depending on the above
Look at the Firewall Log does it show dropped packets?
 
OP
K

kozak79

Active Member
You know, it didn't give a breakdown of each task under Service Host.

But I think I fixed it. Been googling for a long time and found on another forum that it might be the ProgramDataUpdater. Setting it to "1 Minute" seems to have resolved it for now. I'll see how it goes.

snippet.PNG
 

GreyFox7

Super Moderator
Staff member
Well that would probably stop what its doing ... but then it isn't doing what it was supposed to do. :)
If you let it go does it keep running forever???

ProgramDataUpdater ... hmm part of the Application Experience gathering of Microsoft Customer Experience Improvement Program".

Opting out would probably stop it completely. :)

See... I thought it was a botnet :D
 

zhenya

Active Member
I'm having the same issue - SP3 on Win 10. Seems to go away eventually, but this is a major annoyance especially as it hasn't been more than a couple of weeks since they finally fixed the SD card CPU issue!
 

zhenya

Active Member
Grr. Suddenly this has gotten a lot worse this morning. Computer is basically unusable since this update. This process is using 30-40% CPU at all times, and Edge locks up on most pages, and the entire UI is too laggy to use.

Trying to restore to before this update was applied, but the first attempt failed with a cryptic error...

Not impressed Microsoft!
 
OP
K

kozak79

Active Member
Grr. Suddenly this has gotten a lot worse this morning. Computer is basically unusable since this update. This process is using 30-40% CPU at all times, and Edge locks up on most pages, and the entire UI is too laggy to use.

Trying to restore to before this update was applied, but the first attempt failed with a cryptic error...

Not impressed Microsoft!

I read that after some Windows Updates, some kind of .NET Service will run and use up a lot of CPU "unpacking" some things. I noticed this myself after updating my SP3 last night and turning it on this morning. Eventually the .NET service stopped what it was doing and all back to normal.
 

zhenya

Active Member
Mine doesn't appear to be anything like that. I removed the last two system updates installed last week and no change.

Now I frequently get to the Desktop and Edge stops responding after a couple of tabs and I can't even get the Start menu to open. I've spent all morning on this so far without being able to get any work done!
 
I had the exact same problem but in safe mode had to completely disable the Diagnostic Policy Service. It was revving up my computer so bad that I kept getting BSOD's "Critical process died". I suspect that the DPS service may be important. However since disabling the service my computer has been running smooth as room-temperature butter.
 

zhenya

Active Member
Well after an entire day of struggling with this I've discovered that if I boot my Surface before I place it in the docking station, I don't have the issue. Of course that means that half of my content on my monitor when I'm docked is fuzzy due to scaling, but at least it works. If I boot up while in the dock the thing is so unstable that I was on the verge of a complete restore even though that would have cost me at least another day or two of productivity to restore.

In troubleshooting this I tried to manually update the dock's Ethernet driver to the latest version - current version installed is 2014 and there is a June 2015 version out there - but that seemed to immediately bring back the Interrupts issue that I thought was related to the SD card. Reverting to the 2014 driver fixed that problem so obviously there is some relation there. Right now I have to make sure I boot outside of the dock, and I have my Ethernet cable disconnected. Ethernet on the dock has been nothing but trouble since Windows 10 - it drops out about twice an hour most days.

Not impressed that they are getting ready to release new hardware tomorrow when they can't even get the basics right on their existing hardware.
 

Alershka

New Member
I have had my fan on almost constantly over the past few weeks. My cpu usage remains low, around 10% or so. If I just have the desktop up, the fan turns off after a few minutes. Open up an app or web browser and it ramps back up. It is loud enough that my wife comments about it while we are watching TV. I'd love some steps on how to troubleshoot this.

I have an i5 / 128gb running Win 10, without the touch keyboard. I am using an incipio feather case, could that cause more heat to be retained? Software-wise, I am using bitdefender free for AV. I also installed the 9/29 firmware update and I am up to date on my patches.
 
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