6

I'm using a Dell XPS 13 (3960) laptop, with Windows 10 operating system.

Recently, after I was hearing loud laptop fans noises even when no high resouce programs running, I decided to check, and indeed I've seen a service called "Windows Audio" using almost 40% of the CPU.

After a restart (and not running anything) it was still doing that. I uninstalled the audio drivers and let the OS reinstall them automatically and it seemed to repair the issue, but after a while it happened again.

It's under "Service Host: Local Service (Network Restricted)"

The process taking CPU

I've looked it up and it seems like no other issue like mine happened to anyone, and if it did, the reason had nothing to do with mine (software I don't have etc.).

Any way to check why it happens and fix it?

Edit: If I restart the service it goes back to minimal CPU usage.

Improve this question
3
  • any update? have you seen the issue again and were you able to trace it with WPRUI/WPA?
    – magicandre1981
    Commented May 14, 2017 at 7:35
  • @magicandre1981 - well you know how it is... since this post i'm waiting for the issue to happen again to use your method but it just doesn't happen, i'll update when it will.
    – argamanza
    Commented May 16, 2017 at 22:45
  • ok, have you installed a driver update (that may fixed it)?
    – magicandre1981
    Commented May 17, 2017 at 15:14

6 Answers 6

Reset to default
6

To see why audio service causes such a high cpu usage you need to install the Windows Performance Toolkit, which is part of the Windows 10 SDK.

enter image description here (all other entries can be unselected)

Run WPRUI.exe, select First Level, CPU Usage and click on start. Capture 1 minute of the CPU usage, now click on Save to save the data into a ETL file.

Now make a double click on the generated ETL file to open the ETL in Windows Performance Analyzer (WPA.exe), drag and drop the CPU Usage (Sampled) to analyze pane:

enter image description here

Now load debug symbols in WPA and expand the stack of the svchost.exe which has a high value at % Weight (after blue line). Here look for function names to see what audio service does.

Often high cpu usage of audio service is caused by audio improvements from the audio driver. The best is to disable this improvements.

enter image description here enter image description here

Improve this answer
1
  • That is the exact problem I was facing, thank you very much! in my case (Windows 10) I opened Speakers Properties -> Advanced tab, and unchecked Enable audio Enhancements. Then WaveSysSync service's CPU usage dropped from 5% to 0%. But, sound different is significant.
    – Nuryagdy Mustapayev
    Commented Jan 10, 2021 at 15:42
5

I am having the exact same issue like you. Right after booting Windows 10 17134 (1803) after an in-place-upgrade from 16299 (1709), the "Windows Audio" service uses 20% of my 16 core CPU. Restarting the service brings everything back to normal and audio works fine in both cases without any issues. Checking this with procmon, the Windows Audio service is querying the installed audio devices in the registry all few ms in a steady loop, hence the high CPU usage. After restarting the service, these steady "terror-queries" stop, hence CPU load and everything else goes back to normal.

The problem came from a audio-loopback-driver that I´ve installed (called ODeus AsioLinkPro). I´ve completely removed the driver and manually made sure that there are no leftovers in the registry and the C:\ drive. CPU usage of Windows Audio went to normal right away. I´ve then reinstalled. But the issue came back right away after installing the driver again. However, since there is no update to this driver (company does not exist anymore) and since I need it in any case AND since restarting the Windows Audio service for one time during a Windows sessions solves the issue, I´ve simply created a .BAT file with:

@echo off
echo Restarting Windows Audio to fix high CPU usage in 17134
net stop Audiosrv
net start Audiosrv

... And added it to the Task Scheduler for the system start. This solves the problem for me, although with a dirty hack. ;-)

In any case: re-installing your audio-drivers could possibly fix the issue, but if not, you can do it with the dirty hack for now. Maybe MS is issuing a bugfix for it too, since it all worked fine in 1709 for me.

Improve this answer
2
  • 1
    Restarting the device (on the command prompt) as shown in this answer worked for me. (net stop Audiosrv, net start Audiosrv). This is so much more convenient than restarting the whole computer!
    – Jet Blue
    Commented Jan 28, 2021 at 2:24
  • Yup, I just ran the stop and start commands consequtively on Windows Powershell (Admin) and it worked
    – Mohd Abdul Mujib
    Commented May 5, 2022 at 14:45
3

Razer Surround was causing this on my PC. Uninstalled and problem solved.

Improve this answer
2
  • 3
    Welcome to Super User. Almost any program could be the cause of the symptom. So every user mentioning which program was the problem in their case isn't all that helpful. Even if another user has the same program installed, it may not be the cause in their case. It would be more useful to describe how to identify the problem, so the solution applies to all users.
    – fixer1234
    Commented Sep 28, 2018 at 23:49
  • 4
    Turns out Razer Surround was causing this issue for me too. Thank you.
    – kingkode
    Commented Jan 21, 2019 at 1:05
1

I've solved my issue by disabling rainmeter. I was using monstercat visualizer addon and it probably caused it.

Improve this answer
3
  • 1
    Welcome to Super User. Almost any program could be the cause of the symptom. So every user mentioning which program was the problem in their case isn't all that helpful. Even if another user has the same program installed, it may not be the cause in their case. It would be more useful to describe how to identify the problem, so the solution applies to all users.
    – fixer1234
    Commented Sep 28, 2018 at 23:49
  • 2
    I have this problem and I installed rainmeter a few days ago. I for one am thankful for this answer - also we're not the only ones: superuser.com/a/1128655/29119
    – Mikey
    Commented May 13, 2019 at 18:32
  • 1
    Would like to second that - it may not be good form, but I googled for my problem, found this answer, and killing rainmeter was my solution. If that's not how SO is supposed to work, then I'm clearly very confused.
    – bracec
    Commented Mar 8, 2020 at 5:51
0

I have Lenovo 910 2in1 laptop. I had a high CPU % used by Window audio device after updating all the drivers. I found this situation by task manager (ctrl+alt+delete). Eventually this scenario drain the battery heavily. I rollback the audio driver to old version and basically it resolve all the issue of battery draining now it shows 9 to 10 hours as usual.

Improve this answer
-1

I've had this issue in the past; I solved it by uninstalling the OEM drivers for the specific sound card and instead installing the drivers for the card's chipset alone; chipset drivers are usually much more stable.

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .