My daily workload requires me to have Outlook, Excel, Firefox & IE (for different web apps that are not compatible with all browsers), Skype, and a few other programs running pretty much all the time. All of these programs are ruthless memory/thread hogs and some of them are 32-bit versions, which makes things worse.
Aside from that, I also use VS2015 a lot, which spawns background processes like there's no tomorrow.
Here are the processes currently listed in Task Manager that are VS2015-related:
conhost.exe
- Several instances of this are always running. If I kill these, two will always come back, but they don't consume a lot of resourcesdevenv.exe
- I know this is the main IDE process, but why does it idle at 700MB of RAM and 45 threads.Microsoft.VsHub.Server.HttpHost.exe
andMicrosoft.VsHub.Server.HttpHost64.exe
- No idea what these are doing and they take each average about 100MB RAM and a few dozen threads to idle. If I kill them, they come back.msvsmon.exe
- Based on its location its something to do with the debugger, but why is it running when I'm not in debug mode? If I kill it I get an error message and it comes back immediately.VsHub.exe
- Not really sure what it is, and not too resource intensive. If I kill it, it takes the two "Microsfot.VsHub..." process with it, but they all come back in a minute.MSBuild.exe
- I know this is the build engine. When I run a build, up to 4 of these processes start and they stay alive, idling with about 40MB of RAM a piece.ScriptedSandbox64.exe
- Not sure what this is, but it I kill it it stays dead until I run a build, then it keeps idling with 40MB of RAM.VBCSCompiler.exe
- I believe this is Roslyn. If I kill it it stays dead until I build, then it idles with about 100MB of RAM.
Questions
- What are all these processes?
- Can I avoid running any of these?
- Which can I prevent from staying alive when they are not in use?
- How?