Published Apr 21, 2026, 2:00 PM EDT
Yadullah Abidi is a Computer Science graduate from the University of Delhi and holds a postgraduate degree in Journalism from the Asian College of Journalism, Chennai. With over a decade of experience in Windows and Linux systems, programming, PC hardware, cybersecurity, malware analysis, and gaming, he combines deep technical knowledge with strong editorial instincts.
Yadullah currently writes for MakeUseOf as a Staff Writer, covering cybersecurity, gaming, and consumer tech. He formerly worked as Associate Editor at Candid.Technology and as News Editor at The Mac Observer, where he reported on everything from raging cyberattacks to the latest in Apple tech.
In addition to his journalism work, Yadullah is a full-stack developer with experience in JavaScript/TypeScript, Next.js, the MERN stack, Python, C/C++, and AI/ML. Whether he's analyzing malware, reviewing hardware, or building tools on GitHub, he brings a hands-on, developer’s perspective to tech journalism.
You might use your Windows 11 computer and think it's in perfect shape. No uncalled-for startup apps, no unnecessary services running, and RAM usage sitting well below peak. However, the keen-eyed among you must have noticed random RAM spikes that you might struggle to explain. It's a short spike, sometimes too short to even take a screenshot, and often completely random.
But this completely random spike can send your PC over the edge when you need it to be stable under load. If you're running a heavy game or rendering a file, this kind of random, sharp spike can cause your RAM to overload, often crashing whatever process was running at the moment.
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Task Scheduler isn’t as quiet as it looks
The hidden background jobs you never see coming
Generally speaking, we open the Task Scheduler, disable a few obvious things, maybe disable update tasks, and call it a day. But there's more to Task Scheduler than meets the eye. Sure, you can fix your RAM spikes by disabling a useless Windows 11 service, but these services are a little hard to find.
You see, the Windows Task Scheduler is organized into a deeply nested folder structure. Which means, most of the notable tasks that affect Windows are actually buried under Task Scheduler > Library > Microsoft > Windows. In here, you'll find two subfolders that are especially worthy of your attention: Application Experience and Diagnosis.
These folders hold Microsoft's scheduled tasks, placed there to run silently in the background whether you want them to or not. Additionally, they don't show up as persistent processes in Task Manager, which makes them quite hard to catch. The processes that cause random, almost undetectable RAM spikes on your computer are almost certainly living in these two subfolders.
This folder is doing more than you think
What Application Experience tasks are really up to
You've got several tasks inside the Application Experience folder that can affect your PC, the first one being Microsoft Compatibility Appraiser. This task is responsible for the CompatTelRunner.exe process, which scans the installed programs on your system, generates compatibility reports, and ships them to Microsoft under the Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP).
The program can cause high CPU and disk usage spikes that last anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes. It also runs under a shared service host process, making it hard to spot within Task Manager.
Next up is ProgramDataUpdater — Compatibility Appraiser's data harvesting companion. It's less aggressive on its own, but adds more resource usage on top of the aforementioned process, enlarging it's footprint.
Then you've got StartupAppTask, which monitors what applications launch at startup and reports back to the compatibility database. Windows 11 still runs dinosaur services at boot, and this is one of them. Note that none of these processes ask for your permission before running, and they're not entirely transparent about what information they collect. They just run, spike your resource usage, and hide away.
Maintenance tasks aren’t always lightweight
Scheduled jobs come with a memory cost
The Diagnosis folder handles Microsoft's scheduled maintenance for Windows. These are periodic tasks designed to scan, detect, and fix system problems automatically. It might seem helpful, but a ton of these utilities running on an already strained system adds up pretty quickly. These tasks are scheduled to run every Sunday at 1 AM or whenever the system thinks your PC is idle. As you'd expect, they perform a maintenance run on your PC that can spike usage.
This maintenance framework includes the RunFullMemoryDiagnostics task under Memory Diagnostics. It's one of the most resource-intensive memory tasks that Windows runs, pushing the SYSTEM process to consume significantly more CPU, and it is often the final task to run during a maintenance cycle. Like other tasks, it also sits under the svhost.exe process under Task Manager and can be a real pain to find.
These spikes are easy to miss
Why they disappear before you can track them
The main reason these spikes can be hard to catch is the tasks themselves. Unlike regular services constantly running in the background, scheduled tasks run according to triggers. These triggers can fire at idle, at a specific time, or when a particular event occurs. By the time you open the Task Manager and check the processes tab, they're often done running and terminate themselves.
A better approach to catch them is to use the Resource Monitor instead. Leave the Resource Monitor running in the background and use its more detailed process breakdown to catch any short-lived processes that spike and terminate. Alternatively, you can also use the Event Viewer, point it to the subfolders above, and check the logs for task start and stop timestamps when your spike happened.
Fixing it takes less than a minute
Disabling the right tasks without breaking anything
You can disable any tasks within the Application Experience folder using the Task Scheduler itself by right-clicking the task you want and choosing Disable. If you'd rather not dig through settings, an easier approach is to use the following PowerShell commands to cleanly disable the aforementioned features:
Disable-ScheduledTask -TaskPath '\Microsoft\Windows\Application Experience' -TaskName 'Microsoft Compatibility Appraiser'
Disable-ScheduledTask -TaskPath '\Microsoft\Windows\Application Experience' -TaskName 'ProgramDataUpdater'
Disable-ScheduledTask -TaskPath '\Microsoft\Windows\Application Experience' -TaskName 'StartupAppTask'
Disabling tasks in the Diagnosis folder is slightly tricky, as the Scheduled task is tied into Windows' broader automatic maintenance system. You can disable it, but keep in mind that it's also responsible for identifying and flagging system problems via the Action Center. A better approach would be to change the trigger time so maintenance runs when you're not using your machine. After all, not all Windows services are safe to disable.
It’s simpler (and trickier) than it seems
Why Task Scheduler deserves more attention than it gets
The Windows' Task Scheduler is a massive system, and the Microsoft-owned tasks nested inside it do a lot more than you'd think. The problem is, most people don't dig deep enough to find these sneaky processes, and they're not readily visible either.
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But once you know where to look, those mysterious RAM spikes will stop looking like an expensive hardware swap and more like an evening you need to spend under Windows' hood.