Recently, I’ve come across an annoying problem in Windows 7. There seems to be a service, named PresentationFontCache.exe, that hogs CPU power for an extended period of time – which can be extremely annoying when playing games or using CPU-intensive applications.
From research, the service seems to be part of the ‘Windows Presentation Foundation service’ and doesn’t appear to be anything harmful – just a nuisance. It would be a bad idea to kill the service permanently as it is quite important (although many have resorted to killing it without major issues), however there is a good fix which I’ve come across.
To fix the problem, we simply need to remove the cache that it creates.
Head to C:\Windows\ServiceProfiles\LocalService\AppData\Local (it won’t show up in Windows Explorer – you’ll need to manually navigate to it). Now in this directory you should see up to three files – named as follows:
- FontCache3.0.0.0
- FontCache-System
- FontCache-S-xxxxxx….
If you delete the file FontCache3.0.0.0 whilst the PresentationFontCache.exe service is killed (kill it from Task Manager), it should resolve your problem. I actually removed all three files and it hasn’t done any damage, but I’m relatively sure you only need to remove FontCache3.0.0.0. Apparently, in some cases, the file may be called FontCache4.0.0.0 – in which case remove that file.
Once that’s done, reboot your computer and all should be resolved!
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I had the same problem with high CPU usage from presentation fontcache.exe. I have a Lenovo Thinkpad running W7 64bit which seems to have a predisposition for this so I found when I googled. As above, you can find the FontCache3.0.0.0.dat file in Windows Explorer, but only after you make all files visible. Go to Control Panel :
Appearance :
Folder Options :
Show hidden files and folders : click the radio button show hidden files, folders and drives and untick the hide protected operating system files. Then apply. Now if you go to C:\Windows\ServiceProfiles\LocalService\AppData\Local, AppData and Local will show. I just renamed the .dat file by adding .bak just so I could re-instate it if needed.
Wow the difference, the computer runs cooler, no alerts, brilliant. Thank goodness for the internet!
Thanks for that tip 🙂 – backing up the file is a good idea just in case it’s needed again!