Noticing that my desktop was eating up 50% of it’s CPU while doing nothing more intensive then playing a mp3, I popped open Task Manager to see what was up. A single svchost process was eating 48-50% of the cpu constantly. Since Windows built in process manager is a load of crap, I went and grabbed Process Explorer from the now bought out Sysinternals.
Good olde PID 1772 was the culprit, being the service for HP Network Devices Support. I have a HP Photosmart C6280 All-in-one in my office, which is a very capable network printer, but it currently isn’t connected to the network due to some needing to purchase a better wireless link for it’s area of the house. So there is no HP devices running on the network, nor does this svchost process have any TCP/IP ports open. So what the hell is it doing eating my CPU?
I’m going to leave this service disabled, and rely on the fact that, I’ve configured the printer to a static ip.
Once again, HP produces some amazingly crappy desktop software…
Note: You should kill off the service from the normal services menu, as attempting to kill it from Process Explorer, it simply re-spawned.