How do I stop Windows Operating System from using up my bandwidth quota?
I'm in NZ, which means my internet is capped at 5GB, which is not funny. I notice on my Windows 7 that even after disabling automatic update (don't worry, I flick it back on during my off peak hours) it still constantly downloads about 1kb per second, which starts to stack up. Apparently, it's svchost.exe, and it doesn't seem to be doing anything important.
How do I stop Windows from stealing all my internet? Please help!
If I may clarify things, is it possible for me to connect to the internet without letting the Operating System itself using bandwidth?
svchost.exe is just the name for a "Service Host Process", which means that it... hosts.... Windows Services.
In other words, any number of different services may be running within an svchost.exe instance. Some of them run only one service; other svchosts can run many different services within one svchost process.
You definitely don't want to go randomly killing svchost processes because you may be killing useful services, like audio, networking, or your virus scanner.
Instead, what you can do is go into Control Panel, under Administrative Tools, under Services, and Stop services one at a time until the data transfer goes away.
Generally you don't want to stop services that are critical to the function of the system, and you will get warnings if you try to stop a service that other services depend upon (hint: stopping these is a pretty bad idea). BUT, you can try stopping them anyway.... here's the process:
Make sure you aren't running any programs with valuable unsaved data
Close all applications
Stop the service
If it breaks your computer, either start it again, or if you are unable to start it, simply reboot the computer and it will operate normally again (the right-click "Stop" function is only until you start it again or reboot, it isn't permanent).
Once you find THE service that is consuming the data, you can permanently disable it either by uninstalling the application it's associated with, or by going into Properties for the service (also in the right-click menu for the service), and changing the value in the drop-down box to Disabled.
P.S. -- Data caps are terrible, I feel bad for you.
Download the Free version of Net Balancer, run it, it will show you what is using bandwidth and how much, leave it open for a while you will see what is constantly using bandwidth, some of it is an unavoidable consequence of using W7, as it is much more chatty on the network than XP.
If NetBalancer does not help sort it out, Open Task manager, go to the processes tab, tick "show processes for all users", click the "name" header to sort processes by name, then right click on one of the svchost exe entries and select "go to Services", it will open the services tab and automatically highlight all the services running under that one svchost process. Might give you some insight to what can be safely disabled.
Nice information over here on what specific services can be safely disabled.
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