Anyone using Windows, one way or another, had to call the "Task Manager" to, for example, terminate a hung application or track a service that is loading system resources. And many noticed that the Taskhost service is constantly hanging in the process tree. What is it, we will try to figure it out. At least, let us briefly consider its purpose, functioning and some problems in work.
Taskhost: what is it?
In general, an explanatory full description of the operation of the Taskhost service itself, even on the Internet, is quite problematic. This applies to material designed for the average user, written in a simple accessible language. Basically, everything relates to the technical aspect and the jungle of the basics of Windows. But we still try to consider the taskhost process. We will find out what kind of service this is.
Based on what Microsoft specialists write, the Taskhost service can be described as a means of launching applications and programs with 32-bit architecture in a system, which are presented not as a standard executable EXE file, but as a dynamic library DLL containing program executable code, which is extracted from it by this service.
The easiest way to explain this is by using, say, VST-, DX- or RTAS-plugins for music programs equipped with appropriate hosts. In this case, such virtual instruments and effects are represented by DLL files.
In some ways, it resembles the operating principles of the rundll32 and svchost processes, but only the first of these two services is launched for each process separately, and the second is responsible for launching all 32-bit applications as a whole. Judging by this, the Taskhost process is duplicate, and it starts in several ways (with different attributes) to call several processes, but several dynamic libraries hang on the same service, which sometimes leads to too high a load on system resources and to the whole system freezing. In addition, there are often conflicts between the parallel processes of Taskhost and Rundll32.
By the way, although taskhost is a common system process, it starts separately for each user session.
Problems with the load on system resources
So, in the “Task Manager” in the process tree and on the monitor of system resources, the most resource-intensive task is the Taskhost service. What is this in terms of consuming system resources? And here is what. Since the service is started in the singular with each of the attributes LOCAL SERVICE, SYSTEM and under the current username, but it is responsible for running several libraries depending on the excessive requirements of any of them, the load on the Taskhost service file increases, which invariably leads to the growing consumption of CPU and RAM.
Weak processors simply do not have time to process such an amount of information.
Can I disable the taskhost.exe service?
Now a few words about the possibility of disabling a service if there is an excessive load on system resources. In principle, it is believed that system services such as Taskhost Windows (in the sense of the "OS itself") cannot be disabled. In the standard version it is, but this restriction can be circumvented. If you think that when this service is disabled, some negative consequences will appear in the system, you are deeply mistaken. Nothing terrible will happen, but additional resources will be freed, and speed will increase. This is especially true for Windows XP and Vista.
To disable, you can use the deactivation of the "Task Scheduler" or one of its functions called RacSysprepGeneralize. But that is another question.