High CPU since Win 10 Anniversary update

Attlebax · 04-11-2017, 03:21 PM

I didn't have this issue until a couple of weeks ago on Windows 10. All of a sudden the WUDFHost ran at 30-50% in Task Manager and pushed the CPU to 100% virtually all the time. This slowed the PC to a point of being nearly useless. It seemed to coincide with a large update to Windows.

If I stopped the WUDFHost in Task Manager the CPU immediately dropped to 70% but it popped back up a moment later. This meant that something was relaunching ever few seconds. I had another PC which was unaffected.

I eventually found it. I had been doing some work with Near Field Communications about a year ago and had loaded the driver for an NXP dongle. I hadn't used it for a while. I removed the NXP program and associated entry for the hardware in Drivers. I restarted the PC and had an immediate result with the CPU no longer pushing 100% and the WUDFHost no longer visibly ran. The CPU now hovers around 27%.

So a simple deep tidy up and getting rid of the dead wood cured it. I would suspect most others are the result of a similar driver conflict. IOBit Driver Booster had not found it needed updating.

I found many useless suggestions on the internet to resolve the problem and a number of them were close to being stupidly dangerous to the health of the PC.

04-11-2017, 03:21 PM	#3
Attlebax Junior Member Join Date: Apr 2017 Posts: 1	WUDFHost.exe high CPU - one solved at least! I didn't have this issue until a couple of weeks ago on Windows 10. All of a sudden the WUDFHost ran at 30-50% in Task Manager and pushed the CPU to 100% virtually all the time. This slowed the PC to a point of being nearly useless. It seemed to coincide with a large update to Windows. If I stopped the WUDFHost in Task Manager the CPU immediately dropped to 70% but it popped back up a moment later. This meant that something was relaunching ever few seconds. I had another PC which was unaffected. I eventually found it. I had been doing some work with Near Field Communications about a year ago and had loaded the driver for an NXP dongle. I hadn't used it for a while. I removed the NXP program and associated entry for the hardware in Drivers. I restarted the PC and had an immediate result with the CPU no longer pushing 100% and the WUDFHost no longer visibly ran. The CPU now hovers around 27%. So a simple deep tidy up and getting rid of the dead wood cured it. I would suspect most others are the result of a similar driver conflict. IOBit Driver Booster had not found it needed updating. I found many useless suggestions on the internet to resolve the problem and a number of them were close to being stupidly dangerous to the health of the PC.