Why is ATH.exe using 50% of my CPU?

While I agree that posting solutions that charge anything is SPAM, one thing is clear. Apple has little if any intention of fixing this problem or the problem with applemobiledeviceservice.exe. These problems existed in previous versions of iTunes/iOS and I have been trying to get resolution to both of them for the better part of 2012. Apple's advice is to remove and reinstall everything continually. I spoke with them and they ran out of options. Apple will not invest anything in resolving a problem that affects only Windows as stated by previous posts in other threads. For the applemobiledeviceservice.exe issue Apple recommends installing a program to determine what other vendor's LSP is causing the problem and then search for a fix to that vendor's issue. Ha! The only LSP's running are Bonjour and Windows Live on my machine. Nobody's been able to fix anything by deleting Windows Live. Bonjour? Right, I believe that. So then maybe reinstalling the TCP/IP stack on your computer if nothing else works. A terrible joke for support.

The problems have existed for at least 3 versions of iTunes that I am aware of. Apple has no intentions of fixing either problem.

just happened to me too (Win7, 64 bit, iTunes 10.7.0.21). Exited iTunes and everything settled down.

I've just decided to exit iTunes when I'm not sync'ing since I've seen several Apple processes run amok. Upgrading to iTunes 11 may help but my recent attempt to upgrade was a disaster so I rolled back to v10. Good luck if you go that route.

I have this problem also. What I do is bring up the task manager and lower the priority on the ATH.exe process. Your processor will still run at 100% but other programs will take priority over the ath.exe process so that your computer becomes usable and you don't really notice.

jaymoore5 wrote:

I have this problem also. What I do is bring up the task manager and lower the priority on the ATH.exe process. Your processor will still run at 100% but other programs will take priority over the ath.exe process so that your computer becomes usable and you don't really notice.

If you've gotten as far as seeing ATH.exe or AppleMobileDeviceService.exe at 100% CPU in task manager, you might as well just kill the process. Once it's in that state, it's dead, and wifi syncing won't work again until you kill/restart the hung Apple process.

Running iTunes 11.0.1.12 on Windows 7 Enterprise and I just had ATH.exe take 25% for about 5 minutes. I have iPhone 4 and iPad 2 both set to sync wirelessly, and both were listed in iTunes at the time but neither device was showing as actively syncing at the time. Maybe issues have been improved with the release of iTunes 11 as I notice even recent posts still refer to 10.7.

No, this issue has NOT improved under any version of iTunes 11. The problem still exists, we're all just getting tired of talking about it.

I've just resigned myself to restarting my computer whenever I need to sync, then manually killing all ATH and AppleMobileService processes. Talk about convenience!

And Apple still hasn't even acknowledged the issue.

I've read through this thread and other sites regarding ATH.exe but does anybody know exactly what these services are doing when they're pulling 25%, 50% or 100%? Some of the information on the net is wrong. For example:

"Part of the Apple iTunes (AirTrafficHost) to iPhone/iPad wired/wireless synching application. ATH.exe is loaded when itunes.exe (iTunes by Apple) is launched and will remain running during the lifetime of iTunes. AirTrafficHost.framework allows Apple iOS mobile devices to comunicate over the wireless network."

Well I'm listening to music right now using iTunes and ATH.exe is not running in the background!

I'm going to assume that if ATH.exe is using 100% for several hours then it's a crashed/stuck process that needs to be killed.

But what about other times? Like when, for me, ATH.exe used 25% (I have a quad-core i7 so it's using one core flat out) for 5 minutes or so. What is it doing that requires 25% of a 2.76 GHz quad-core i7? What data is it processing and for what purpose? Is there heavy WiFi traffic or disk usage? As a developer myself I find it unlikely that Apple would be clumsy enough to write software with such serious memory leaks, etc.

I guess I'll have to drag out the MacBook, fire up Xcode and get the debugger running... 😝

Oops! See my mistake there? These are services running on Windows! DOH 😊

Same issue with me - ATH.exe hogging the CPU

It feels like my PC is a battleground between Apple and Microsoft ..

I just got back to my PC and saw that ATH.exe was using 50% (a full core) and the AppleMobileDevice service was using the other 50% (the other full core) of my dual core cpu. The system was slugish to the point of having to wait 15 seconds while the mouse updated it's position!

I also use a program called Process Hacker (task manager on steroids) to monitor my system stats (cpu usage, network, memory), and saw that ATH was using all it's cpu power in a thread called msvcr80.dll, which is part of the Microsoft Visual Studio 8 library. I'm thinking ATH was possibly coded in Visual C, since ATH was calling that dll.

Note: I'm still running iTunes 10.7.0.21 because when I upgraded to the latest v11, ATH & AppleMobileDevice still did the whole "I own your CPU" thing, and I couldn't stand the visual changes that were made between the two versions.

I've been trying everything to work around this problem, from a fresh build with nothing else loaded on VMWare Windows 8 to cleaning up my Windows 7 box of everything (including VMWare that Apple suggests might be at fault).

Long and short of it all is that WIFI syncing is broken, no question. Apple please fix it.......(yes I know they don't read these posts).

I'm also having ATH.exe hogging my system resources. I can't leave iTunes open for even 2 min before the ATH's start stacking up.

Task Manager will say that I have 90 processes running, I close one ATH process and suddenly I'm down to 83 processes. Something really funking is going on here. Lots of RAM and processor are being used.

Windows 7 Ultimate 64, iTunes 11 (latest build).

Yeah, I'm having the issue too. ATH.exe regularly uses 25% of my Quadcore. Sometimes, AppleMobileDeviceService.exe also uses a full core and I'm with 50% CPU usage for nothing. If I didn't have a quadcore, iTunes would force me to restart my computer every few minutes! I noticed the problem, because of my cooling system...

Meanwhile, Task Manager constantly runs in the background so that I can see this little CPU thingy in the task bar. Whenever the green bar becomes visible, I just kill ATH/AMDS.exe and it's fine again.

Someone above was having a problem with wifi synch:

You need to close iTunes, restart the service (NOT PROCESS!) "Apple Mobile Device", and start iTunes again. Then it works. I do this every time I want to synch my iPhone...

But all these are just work-arounds and it doesn't "just work".

Apple, FIX THIS!

Encountered the issue for the first time myself today on Win 7 64-bit. I use rainmeter so I knew via my CPU gauge the minute that it was happening. That and my fans went into helicopter mode.

I just opened up a command prompt and used the command "taskkill /F /IM ath.exe"

That's the best way to kill it quickly, although I'm not sure if has any negative side effects.

Edit to previous statement.

I was doing some things on my computer earlier and listening to music when Apple Mobile Device Service and Ath decided to come back. Both tried to hog over 50% of my CPU and basically crippled my computer, it was a pain to even kill them both.

I stopped Apple Mobile Device Service and put it on manual, and killed ATH the same way as before. I'll be turning off WIFI sync on all my devices as soon as possible to see if that helps.

Go to **** Apple. Fix this garbage.