Once or twice a week taskhost.exe slows my computer to a halt! It takes up 25% of my CPU power (ie. 1 processor). I can't kill it an have no idea what it is doing. I imagine that its some kind of window's scheduled activity.
How can I figure out what is causing this problem? How can I stop it?
TaskHost.exe itself is a wrapper for dll or other exe and run as a windows service.
3 things to try
#1
Before spending time hunting down what taskhost actual loaded. Check Event Viewer for errors. That may give out a quick answer or point you to the right direction.
#2
Open Task Manager, go to Processes tab. On menu bar (top), click View -> Select Columns.... In pop-up windows, select Command Line.
That may give you an idea which dll taskhost.exe loaded.
Additionally, pay attention at the path of taskhost.exe. It should be
<Windows directory>\System32\Taskhost.exe
If not, you may have other problem.
#3
Same idea as #2, but use a better tools. Download Process Explorer from Microsoft. It is free. It is able to give more details of running process.
Turns out this was caused by the "RacTask" (Reliability Analysis Custom Handler). I used the Task Scheduler to view "All Running Tasks" and then killed it from there. The problem was immediately addressed.
http://screencast.com/t/1LJUbkdNGbwS
The suggestion to try this was taken from this thread...
Killing via Task Manager kills it only once.
If you want to disable it permanently, see http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/3047.how-to-enable-and-disable-reliability-monitor-data-collection.aspx
In my case, the task seemed to have something to do with Microsoft Customer Experience Improvement Program. (Ironic). It seems to me it was connected in someway with uploading customer configuration data to Microsoft. If so, seems harmless to disable.
Summary: run taskschd.msc, locate Microsoft/Windows/RAC, disable it using GUI.
+1 to the tip to download Process Explorer
