svchost and other processes causing network issues

Question

In the past few weeks, I've been starting to play games again on my pc. I just recently upgraded to windows 11 and have never had problems this bad before.

During any multiplayer game, I will start lagging, my ping will spike into the thousands, the entire game and my entire computer will freeze for a moment (a few seconds, sometimes a few minutes), and sometimes I get disconnected entirely.

I monitored the resource monitor while playing and I noticed the main culprits were:

svchost.exe (NetworkService -p)

svchost.exe (netsvc -p)

svchost.exe (LocalServiceAndNoImpersonation -p)

Widgets.exe

svchost.exe (UnistackSvcGroup)

The bolded ones often take up more of my network than the actual game does when the lag is at its worst.

I have tried:

• updating wifi drivers
• ending the processes
• running a virus scan (kaspersky, came back clean)

I am using WiFi, no other devices have this issue.

Why are these processes taking up so much network? And more importantly, how can I fix this issue?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Hi there,

To determine the service name corresponding to a svchost.exe process, use Task Manager.

Open Resource Monitor and note the process IDs of svchost.exe processes that consume high network usage.

Then, switch to Task Manager and click on the Services tab.

Sort by the PID column and find the service names of the PIDs you noted in ResMon.

See also:

How to completely uninstall Widgets feature on Windows 11 - Pureinfotech: https://pureinfotech.com/uninstall-widgets-powershell-windows-11/

Answer 2

Hello! Thank you for your response and the link to the widgets.

The corresponding services are:

SSDPSRV - SSDP Discovery

Dnscache - DNS Client

BITS - Background Intelligent Transfer Service

Windows Push Notifications User_Service_4e8c966

So how would I stop each of these from taking so much of my network?

Answer 3

From that list, you may disable SSDPSRV if you don't use any UPnP devices and are not on a network. DNS client is essential. BITS is needed for Windows Update. Not sure about Windows Push Notifications User_Service. Maybe you can create a batch file that disables SSDPSRV and BITS during gaming and reenable them later.