"Background Task Host" - 30+ and growing entries in task manager

I just happened to glance at the task manager, and noticed over 30 'Background Task Host' entries under 'Background Processes'. They are all at the 'parent' level, not 'children' under a parent process. They are all consuming 0 CPU, 0 memory, 0 disk, 0 network (so pretty benign, other than their sheer volume).

Right clicking on a few at random, and choosing 'go to details', doesn't reveal much more other than they are all 'suspended'.

Is this 'expected noise' these days, or a sign of an issue? I can't see any way to 'tie' these items to anything else.

Hi @Steerpike
Are you getting a message at shutdown stating that ‘task host is stopping background tasks’?

If you're not, then there is probably no real need for further action.

Marcus Vinicus said:

Are you getting a message at shutdown stating that ‘task host is stopping background tasks’?

Click to expand...

Thanks for the pointer.

Would a 'restart' be the same as a 'shutdown' in this context? I never, ever shutdown but I do restart from time to time (did restart yesterday, as it happens). When I restart, there's always a list of apps 'preventing shutdown' but it's usually things like 'task manager', 'excel', etc. I then choose 'restart anyway'.

Shutdowns and restarts are a bit traumatic given the number of apps/windows/browser sessions I have active at the moment.

EDIT - I see that the page you linked to talks of 'shutdown' but the screenshots clearly indicate a restart, so I'm guessing they are interchangeable in this context ('restart anyway' is the button presented).

And I always choose 'restart anyway' and it does restart. The article suggests the restart anyway will fail if you are suffering from the problem discussed.

Steerpike said:

Thanks for the pointer.

Would a 'restart' be the same as a 'shutdown' in this context? I never, ever shutdown but I do restart from time to time (did restart yesterday, as it happens). When I restart, there's always a list of apps 'preventing shutdown' but it's usually things like 'task manager', 'excel', etc. I then choose 'restart anyway'.

Shutdowns and restarts are a bit traumatic given the number of apps/windows/browser sessions I have active at the moment.

Click to expand...

There is a registry edit that disables it.

1. Open the Registry Editor as an Admin
2. Go to Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\WpnUserService
3. Find Start in the listings on the right-hand window of the Registry Editor.
4. Right click Start and select Modify.
5. Change 2 (i.e. Automatic) to 4 (i.e Disabled).

Close the Registry Editor and reboot and check for any changes or improvements.

What are we disabling here, with the registry edit? Looks like we are disabling the startup of a service 'WpnUserService'. This appears to be the "Windows Push Notification User Service' - so 'push notifications'. Are 'push notifications' directly related to 'background task host' entries?

Steerpike said:

What are we disabling here, with the registry edit? Looks like we are disabling the startup of a service 'WpnUserService'. This appears to be the "Windows Push Notification User Service' - so 'push notifications'. Are 'push notifications' directly related to 'background task host' entries?

Click to expand...

Unless you're having a real issue leave the default settings in place.

I understand it reading the MS documentation that this Background Task Host process relates to Microsoft Store apps and their management by Windows.

Interesting. I don't use the MS Store for anything, and I avoid Cortana and Copilot/etc. I do use MS Office products extensively (excel, word, outlook). I don't play any games.

I'm now up to 40+ processes. I'll keep an eye on it.

A couple of days ago I reported here that I saw over 150 'background task host' processes as children to 'phone link' but that has settled down to 2 now. Over 150 'Phone Link' processes - how to manage or remove

Steerpike said:

Interesting. I don't use the MS Store for anything, and I avoid Cortana and Copilot/etc. I do use MS Office products extensively (excel, word, outlook). I don't play any games.

I'm now up to 40+ processes. I'll keep an eye on it.

A couple of days ago I reported here that I saw over 150 'background task host' processes as children to 'phone link' but that has settled down to 2 now. Over 150 'Phone Link' processes - how to manage or remove

Click to expand...

I now have 81 'background task host' entries in task manager - its slowly but surely growing. My guess is, some action I'm taking is triggering a new instance each time - opening an outlook email, opening a new Edge browser session, or similar. Online information suggests it's tied to 'MS App Store' programs, etc but I don't use anything from the app store as far as I know. I do use outlook extensively, and word, a few excel docs, and I open a lot of browser sessions (both chrome and edge, interchangeably). There's no easy way to track them - with 81 and growing, it's hard to 'eyeball' the addition of a new one.

I took a look at 'Event Viewer', and couldn't find anything in the usual spots - Windows Logs / Setup, System, etc. BUT - I did find 'BackgroundTaskInfrastructure' as an entry under 'Applications and Services Logs' - a place I've never looked before. I don't see any direct reference to 'BackdroundTaskHost.exe', but I see approx 10 instances per day of this:



'... did not complete in response to a cancel notification' - suggesting a build-up, perhaps. And a reference to Microsoft.YourPhone. As stated elsewhere, I've never tried to set up the 'Your Phone' stuff, and it's turned off in the settings, but - clearly 'something' is trying to mess with the 'YourPhone'.

I also note the event log entries are occurring all through the night when I'm not using the computer, so not related to any user actions.

I guess I could kill off the current 80+ instances, then monitor the event log and see if there's correlation between these events and the task manager appearances ... sigh ...

2 days ago, I killed off (right click / end task) the 80+ instances of BackgroundTaskHost.exe. Today, 2 days later, I have 29 new instances in task manager, and event log shows 32 instances of BackgroundTaskInfrastructure events (so not quite 1-to-1, but close), with 'did not complete in response to cancel ...' messages. 28 of them were for 'YourPhone' and 1 was for 'MSTeams'. I think next step is to uninstall YourPhone, since it can't be stopped any other way I can find.

Well that's interesting - I decided to go to settings / system / system components / (phone link entry - ... - more options) / advanced options / Background component permissions / "Let this system component run in the background" - change from 'Power Optimized (recommended)' to 'Never'.

When I next looked at task manager, there were NO entries for BackgroundTaskManager! This doesn't exactly make sense but will keep an eye on it to see what happens ...

Confirmed - I ran for a day+ with the setting above ("let this system component run in background") set to 'Never', and there were NO 'BackgroundTaskHost' entries in task manager. I then changed it back to 'Power Optimized (recommended)', and gradually saw a build-up of BackgroundTaskHost entries in task manager, AND a set of entries in Event Viewer as described above (there were a few more event viewer entries compared to task manager, but clearly a correlation). There were a few 'extra' entries in event viewer, for things like DolbyLabs.DolbyAccess, MSTeams, etc under the same heading. So I'm going to set it back to 'Never' and run with that until I see any reason not to....