Windows operating system is excellent in many ways. It is very user-friendly and works very well for the most of us. But we can’t help but nod when someone calls it weak and prone to thousands of bugs and errors. One of them is how quickly the performance of your windows system gets reduced.
You may have sometimes noticed a high disk usage in your task manager window or even abnormally high CPU usage, also when you do not have anything too heavy running on your RAM, or even when there is seemingly nothing in the background.
When you list the process which is taking highest amount of resources, CompatTelRunner.exe might have popped up on top of the list. What is that software and what does it do anyway?
CompatTelRunner.exe is a windows update tool, which is used to switch to the latest version of the OS, or maybe install some newest service pack updates for your system. Ah, we all love windows updates, don’t we? Annoying but often necessary.
Even though the CompatTelRunner.exe software is meant for improving system performance, it, unfortunately, limits it a lot during execution. It is listed as a Trusted-installer in the system32 folder, which seems to be the problem. So here are four ways to fix the High CPU & Disk Usage by CompatTelRunner.exe
4 Ways to Fix High CPU & Disk Usage by CompatTelRunner.exe
Delete CompatTelRunner.exe
This seems to be a distinct fix for everything. If something is bothering you, just pluck it out! To remove the troublesome CompatTelRunner.exe, navigate to its’s file location.
You can get its location either by searching the exact process name in the Win+S search box, or go to C:\Windows\System32 yourself. There, just search for CompatTelRunner.exe in the search box.
Right click on the exe file and select properties. Head over to the tab that says security, and select the profile that you are using. Then tick the access tick boxes and give yourself full control. Once that is done, click on the advanced button, and head over to the owner tab.
There, you’ll see that the current owner is listed as TrustedInstaller. Click edit and select your profile as the new owner. Hit apply and OK. Finally, select OK and close the properties dialog box.
Now you have access to modify this exe file, and you can safely delete it from the directory where you found it.
Note that, deleting the updates that this exe software has installed, might not be a good idea, as it could be problematic for your system apps and you would get compatibility problems with newer ones.
So just delete the installer and leave the installed updates as you found them just to be on the safer side. Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned, windows love to kill itself over nothing, into the blue screen of death. If it doesn’t solve High CPU & Disk Usage by CompatTelRunner.exe issue then give a try to next method.
Disable CompatTelRunner.exe
If you think deleting it invites unnecessary risk and you merely want to stop it from running, you can do that too. You can disable it using task scheduler and have it knocked out. Here is how to do it.
Go to Run by pressing Win+R and type in taskschd.msc. It will open the task scheduler interface. Go to Library folder, in it, Microsoft->Windows->Application Experience. You will see a list of tasks usually three to four.
Right click on the one that says Microsoft Compatibility Appraiser and simply choose the disable option. That’s all, you have disabled it successfully and should not face any more of those aggressive disk usage problems.
If the problem persists, try and reboot your computer once and retrace the steps mentioned above once again. A simple reboot usually fixes these issues since disabling it sometimes may not take effect immediately. Hope, it helps you to fix High CPU & Disk Usage by CompatTelRunner.exe issue.
Repair Corrupt Files
If you do not wish to remove or disable the installer and want the windows updates to be installed correctly, you need to repair some possibly corrupted software.
To do that, you need to download a repair and replace application on your system. I suggest a software called Reimage Plus. Download the exe file and run it on your slow computer. It will scan your system files and fins the ones that are seemingly corrupted.
You can replace most of those files with new ones and reboot. Within a few moments, the CompatTelRunner.exe file will run again, but this time, run as expected.
Installing latest windows updates are essential to some people, and to them, this method is recommended. I cannot guarantee that it will work every time, but it will surely fix minor issues with your system updates software.
Uninstall KB2952664
KB2952664 is the name of the system update. If you do not wish to have it on your system because of the troublesome CompatTelRunner.exe, then you can delete or uninstall it.
Head over to the search menu by pressing Win+S keys. Type in cmd and right click on it. Select the Run as administrator option and select Yes on the prompt message. Once the command prompt window opens up, simply copy and paste this line:
dism /online /get-packages | findstr KB2952664
It will list all the installed versions of the software update. After that, paste this second command:
dism /online /remove-package /PackageName:Package_for_KB2952664~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.1.1.3
This will remove that update file on your PC. To double check if everything is cleaned out, copy this command line:
Get-HotFix -id KB2952664
If it says cannot find hotfix, then the update has been successfully removed from your computer. You can enjoy lesser CPU utilization now! This should solve High CPU & Disk Usage by CompatTelRunner.exe error.
See also: CPU Temperature Monitor Software
