Work with the User-Defined Exclusion List

Applies To: Windows Server 2008

By default, several svchost.exe processes are included in the user-defined exclusion list. Important operating system services run inside the svchost.exe processes. To ensure that these processes have access to their required CPU bandwidth, they are excluded from management. It is not usually necessary to manage these processes. However, if one or more of these processes start to consume excessive CPU bandwidth, you can manage them by removing them from the user-defined exclusion list. This allows Windows System Resource Manager to control the CPU bandwidth usage of these processes.

Processes that you should add to the user-defined exclusion list include those that do not respond well to management and those that you do not want Windows System Resource Manager to manage. Processes that Windows System Resource Manager does not control are unmanaged and can consume resources freely.

Because the behavior of unmanaged applications cannot be controlled, the effectiveness of Windows System Resource Manager can decrease if you include multiple processes or processes that use resources intensively in the user-defined exclusion list.

Editing the user-defined exclusion list

Membership in the local Administrators group, or equivalent, is required to complete this procedure.

To add or remove a process in the user-defined exclusion list

  1. Open Windows System Resource Manager.

  2. In the console tree, right-click Windows System Resource Manager, and then click Properties.

  3. Click the Exclusion List tab, and then select User Defined.

  4. Add or remove a process as follows, and then click OK:

    • To add a process to the exclusion list, click Add, and then browse to the directory where the program executable is located.

    • To remove a process from the exclusion list, select the process that you want to remove, and then click Remove.

Additional considerations

  • To open Windows System Resource Manager, click Start, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Windows System Resource Manager. In the Connect to Computer dialog box, select This computer, and then click Connect. Microsoft Management Console will start with the Windows System Resource Manager (Local) snap-in open.

  • To add a process that is being managed by the active managing resource allocation policy to the user-defined exclusion list, you must first change the managing resource allocation policy to one that does not match the process or stop Windows System Resource Manager management.

  • If you want to add a process and include its arguments, you must use the command-line tool wsrmc. For help with wsrmc, at a command prompt, type wsrmc /? and then press ENTER.

Additional references