The CPU is the Central Processing Unit of your computer and most of the time, your system uses less than 5% of its CPU until you open a new application, play a video game or perform a task on your system causing the CPU usage to rise or spike temporarily.
Some applications use up more than 50% of your CPU and you can find out which of your applications are culprits to this by opening your task manager. You can do this by holding down Ctrl + Alt + Delete and then selecting task manager from the options. You can also open the task manager by typing ‘Task Manager’ into the search bar.
From the task manager, you can find from the CPU column the application using up a higher percentage of your system’s CPU and by selecting the application and clicking ‘End Process’, you can kill the application and free up whatever CPU power the process was holding hostage. However, clicking ‘End Process’ will quit the application and any progress you have made on the application will be lost.
Applications that take up a large amount of CPU include some background services one of which is the Service Host Superfetch.
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What Is Windows Service Host Superfetch
Windows Superfetch otherwise known as Prefetch is part of Windows Vista and onwards. It is a memory manager built to decrease the time required for a system to boot by making sure the application you open more frequently loads faster.
It does this by monitoring your applications based on when you use them and how often you use them and then storing them in the RAM based on these parameters and loading it from the RAM instead of going to the hard drive when you need them.
For instance, If you use your Google Chrome app more in the morning and your media player app in the evening, Superfetch pre-fetches the Chrome application in the morning and by the evening, it has the Media player waiting for you leaving you with less boot time for the app.
What Causes High CPU Usage In Superfetch service?
Unfortunately, even things that were made with all the right reasons in mind can sometimes pose a threat. Windows Superfetch can use up a lot of disk space causing your computer to slow down terribly, making working an almost impossible and boring task.
This can happen when your PC does not have the latest hardware and although this is not a sign that something bad is happening to your PC, it can still be inconvenient.
High CPU usage as a result of the Service Host Superfetch can sometimes occur when something is temporarily going wrong with the service and it does not know when to stop caching applications and when to preload. Sometimes, it runs all the processes that would have been better run at a later point in time and sometimes, it caches a lot of applications so that it fills up the RAM with frequently used apps and as the size of the applications increases, it takes a longer time to sort out memory.
Does Superfetch affect gaming?
Some Windows users have complained that Windows Superfetch gets in their way while gaming sometimes even freezing their PCs and some have reported a speed increase with their video games after disabling it.
How To Fix The High CPU Usage
Although the service host Superfetch does not pose a serious threat to your computer, some users have expressed dissatisfaction and have often googled “How to stop the Service Host Superfetch from taking up a lot of memory” or “How to disable the Service Host Superfetch”. If you are one of such users, you can easily disable it in a couple of ways and if you are worried that disabling it would harm your system, you have nothing to worry about as that is not the case and you can also easily enable it when you want to.
How do I disable the service host?
From Command Prompt
You can disable the Windows Superfetch using the command prompt by taking the following steps
- Type ‘cmd’ into your windows search bar
- Right-click on the command prompt search result and select ‘Run as administrator’
- On the Command Prompt Screen, Type net.exe stop Superfetch and then sc config sysmain start=disabled, hit enter after each command
- Close the command prompt.
From Services
You can disable Windows Superfetch from services –
- Hold down the Windows Key + R key to open the Run dialogue box
- Type services.msc into the box and then Ok to reveal the services window
- From the list, find the Superfetch and then right-click
- Select properties and then click on the stop button
- From the ‘startup type’ dropdown, select disabled.
Use Windows Registry
Deleting folders from the Windows Registry can be tricky and you should be careful to delete the correct file when taking this route to disable your windows Superfetch.
- Hold down on the Windows Key + R to open up your Run dialogue.
- Type Regedit into the dialogue box
- Navigate to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SYSTEM > CurrentControlSet > Session Manager > Memory Manager > PrefetchParamaters.
- Double-click on “Enable Superfetch” on the right pane and then change the value from ‘1’ to ‘0’, click Ok and restart your system.
- If you cannot find ‘Enable Superfetch’ on the right-pane, right-click on the prefetch parameters
- Open New > DWORD value
- Enter 0 as the value.
- Click Ok
- Restart your system.
See Also: Avast Service High CPU Usage Issue and Ways To Fix It (Updated)
How do I enable The Service Host
You can enable Superfetch using any of the methods used to disable it above.
From Services
- Open your Run dialogue by holding down on the Windows Key + R
- Type ‘services.msc’ into the dialogue box
- From the list, find Superfetch and then right-click
- Select Properties
- Change the Startup type to Automatic and then set service status to Start
- Click Ok.
From Command Prompt
- Run the command prompt by typing ‘cmd’ into the search bar
- Run the following commands and then press enter after each one
sc config “sysmain” start=auto
sc start “sysmain”.
