How Do I Know Which Background Processes I Need

If y'all've installed NVIDIA'southward GeForce Experience software, you'll run across quite a few NVIDIA processes running in the background on your PC. We counted ten separate processes in our Windows Task Managing director. But what do they all do?

We reached out to NVIDIA for an explanation of these processes, just they wouldn't provide any boosted data. Nosotros suppose that's not surprising—non fifty-fifty Microsoft explains all the processes in Windows itself. Merely we learned a lot just by poking around.

(Warning: Nosotros talk most disabling services and ending tasks to puzzle out what does what here, but nosotros don't actually recommend you lot starting time manually disabling services or ending tasks. We don't know exactly what each process does.)

NVIDIA Container

Yous'll see a lot of "NVIDIA Container" processes running on your PC. This program, named nvcontainer.exe, appears to exist responsible for running and containing other NVIDIA processes. In other words, NVIDIA Container isn't doing much itself. It's but running other NVIDIA tasks.

The SysInternals Process Explorer software, now owned past Microsoft, has a process hierarchy that shows many of these NVIDIA processes launch other NVIDIA processes.

Quite a few of these NVIDIA Container processes are associated with groundwork tasks implemented as system services. For example, if you open up the Services application, you lot'll see 4 NVIDIA services: NVIDIA Display Container LS, NVIDIA LocalSystem Container, NVIDIA NetworkService Container, and NVIDIA Telemetry Container.

By default, all these services are prepare to run automatically and always stay running in the background, except for the NVIDIA NetworkService Container. Unfortunately, NVIDIA did non give these services informative descriptions in the Services app.

NVIDIA Display Container LS (NVDisplay.ContainerLocalSystem) handles some display tasks. For instance, if yous open the NVIDIA Control Panel and click Desktop > Evidence Notification Tray Icon, this service is responsible for showing the icon in your notification area. If you end the service, the NVIDIA notification icon will vanish.

However, this service doesn't seem to handle many other display tasks. Even if you lot disable this service, the GeForce Experience overlay however appears to function normally.

It'due south tough to pivot down everything the associated service does, and each likely performs a number of related tasks. For case, the NVIDIA LocalSystem Container (NvContainerLocalSystem) and NVIDIA NetworkService Container (NvContainerNetworkService) services are both required for using NVIDIA GameStream.

RELATED: Relax, NVIDIA's Telemetry Didn't Merely Start Spying on You

The NVIDIA Telemetry Container (NvTelemetryContainer) service does appear to handle gathering information about your system and sending it to NVIDIA. This isn't wholesale data collection, simply, according to the NVIDIA GeForce Experience privacy policy, includes information like your GPU specifications, display details, commuter settings for specific games, the list of games you have installed as shown in GeForce Experience, the amount of RAM you have available, and information nearly your reckoner's other hardware, including your CPU and motherboard. We don't think this is worth panicking over, and much of this data collection is what allows GeForce Experience to suggest optimal graphics settings for your PC games.

NVIDIA ShadowPlay Helper

The NVIDIA ShadowPlay Helper procedure (nvsphelper64.exe on 64-bit versions of Windows or nvsphelper.exe on 32-bit versions of Windows) appears to heed for the hotkey that opens the GeForce Experience overlay from anywhere on your operating organisation. It's Alt+Z by default, merely you lot tin customize it from within the GeForce Feel application. If you end this process in the Chore Manager, Alt+Z won't open up the overlay anymore.

And, if you caput to Settings > Full general in GeForce Experience and toggle the "In-Game Overlay" off, this process volition vanish.

Although NVIDIA ShadowPlay is the name of the feature that records gameplay, the ShadowPlay Helper just appears responsible for opening the overlay. When yous turn on Instant Replay or otherwise start recording gameplay, another NVIDIA Container process starts using CPU, disk, and GPU resources. So at least ane of the NVIDIA Container processes handles gameplay recording with NVIDIA ShadowPlay.

NVIDIA Share

The NVIDIA Share processes (NVIDIA Share.exe)—and yes, there are ii of them—also appear to be part of the GeForce Feel overlay. This makes sense, as the overlay contains sharing features for sharing video clips and screenshots of your gameplay on a variety of dissimilar services.

When you disable the In-Game Overlay from GeForce Experience, these processes will also vanish from your arrangement.

All the same, if you end both NVIDIA Share processes and then press Alt+Z, the overlay volition reopen and you'll see that the NVIDIA Share processes are at present running one time again. This seems to demonstrate that the ShadowPlay Helper listens for the keyboard shortcut and so hands off to the NVIDIA Share processes, which handle the overlay.

NVIDIA Web Helper Service (NVIDIA Web Helper.exe)

The "NVIDIA Spider web Helper.exe" process is located in the NvNode folder. Information technology's a Node.js runtime, and every bit such it'southward based on Chrome's V8 JavaScript engine. It runs JavaScript code for diverse NVIDIA background tasks. In particular, Node.js allows web developers who knows JavaScript to use their JavaScript knowledge to write software that doesn't just run on a web page.

If yous peek in the C:\Program Files (x86)\NVIDIA Corporation\NvNode folder (or C:\Program Files\NVIDIA Corporation\NvNode instead if y'all're using a 32-fleck version of Windows), you'll see the script files it uses. A quick glance at the scripts reveals the NVIDIA Web Helper is used for automatically downloading new drivers and installing them, too as other tasks similar signing into an NVIDIA account.

If yous do want to disable some NVIDIA processes, toggling the "In-Game Overlay" off in GeForce Experience is a guaranteed safe way to do information technology. This will get rid of the NVIDIA ShadowPlay Helper process and the two NVIDIA Share processes until you plow it back on. Once more, we don't generally recommend disabling services from the Services bill of fare—using the program's built-in options is generally a safer manner to cut down on these running processes.