WorkloadManager v4.3 — Fix for WorkloadsSessionHost.exe RAM Hoarding on Copilot+ PCs
By Dante / SafeAutentic
The Problem
If you own a Copilot+ PC (AMD Ryzen AI, Intel Lunar Lake, or Snapdragon X) running Windows 11 24H2 or 25H2, you may have noticed multiple WorkloadsSessionHost.exe processes silently consuming anywhere from 2GB to 8GB of RAM while doing absolutely nothing visible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Dbarfvg2BY
These processes are part of Microsoft's Windows AI infrastructure — the backend that powers Recall, Click to Do, Live Captions, and other AI features. Windows spawns between 5 and 9 instances at startup and keeps them loaded in RAM indefinitely, pre-warming AI models so they respond instantly when called.
The problem: they never release that memory on their own, even when idle. On machines with 16GB of RAM, this alone can push memory usage above 60% before you even open a browser.
What makes it worse on AMD Ryzen AI
On AMD Ryzen AI 300 series (Strix Point, XDNA2 NPU), there is a confirmed bug where the NPU shows 0% compute usage but keeps 3–4GB reserved in shared memory. The AI models are being loaded into system RAM and executed on CPU instead of being offloaded to the XDNA2 engine — completely defeating the purpose of having a dedicated NPU.
The Investigation
Standard approaches don't work:
- Killing processes directly — Windows respawns them immediately via
SystemEventsBroker - Disabling WSAIFabricSvc — kills all AI features including Click to Do
- Registry tweaks from the internet — most are fabricated keys that Windows never reads
- Identifying processes by CommandLine — all instances share the exact same arguments:
Making it impossible to distinguish which instance belongs to which feature
-ServerName:Microsoft.Windows.Private.Workloads.SessionHost
After deep investigation including process hierarchy analysis, module inspection, and handle enumeration, the conclusion was clear: there is no native Windows setting to control this behavior. Microsoft designed these processes to stay loaded indefinitely for low-latency AI responses.
The Solution
WorkloadManager is a lightweight PowerShell daemon that runs silently in the background and enforces a 60-second lifetime on every WorkloadsSessionHost.exe process.
How it works
Windows spawns a new WorkloadsSessionHost.exe
↓
WorkloadManager detects the new PID within 3 seconds
↓
Starts an individual 60-second countdown for that PID
↓
At 60 seconds → Stop-Process -Force → RAM freed
↓
If Windows spawns another one → cycle repeats
Each PID gets its own independent timer. If Click to Do spawns a process to analyze your screen, it gets its 60 seconds to complete the task — then it's terminated. Windows will spawn a fresh instance the next time you use Click to Do.
Key technical decisions
- Uses
System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary[string,datetime]instead of a standard PowerShell hashtable to avoid type casting issues with WMI'suint32ProcessId - Scans every 3 seconds to catch new processes quickly
- Logs every detection and termination to Windows Event Log (
Application → WorkloadManager) including MB freed per process - Does not touch
WSAIFabricSvc— Click to Do remains fully functional - Disables Recall permanently via Group Policy registry keys
Results
In testing, a single cleanup cycle freed over 4,350 MB across 7 processes:
PID 12736 → 3,546 MB freed ← largest offender
PID 14912 → 524 MB freed
PID 6644 → 402 MB freed
PID 15056 → 399 MB freed
PID 13428 → 308 MB freed
PID 6272 → 144 MB freed
PID 14956 → 27 MB freed
Installation
Requirements
- Windows 11 24H2 or 25H2
- Copilot+ PC (AMD Ryzen AI, Intel Lunar Lake, Snapdragon X)
- PowerShell as Administrator
Steps
-
Download all 3 files into the same folder (e.g.
C:\Scripts\)WorkloadManager.ps1Instalar-WorkloadManager.ps1Desinstalar-WorkloadManager.ps1
-
Open Terminal as Administrator (
Win + X→ Terminal (Admin)) and run:
Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force
& "C:\Scripts\Instalar-WorkloadManager.ps1"
- Done. The script starts immediately and auto-launches on every Windows startup via
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run.
Verify it's working
Get-EventLog -LogName Application -Source WorkloadManager -Newest 20 | Select-Object TimeCreated, Message
You should see PIDs being detected and terminated with MB freed.
Uninstall
Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force
& "C:\Scripts\Desinstalar-WorkloadManager.ps1"
What it does and doesn't do
| ✅ Does | ❌ Does not |
|---|---|
| Kill RAM-hoarding WorkloadsSessionHost processes | Break Click to Do |
| Run silently in background | Require third-party software |
| Start automatically with Windows | Modify system files |
| Log all activity to Event Viewer | Disable WSAIFabricSvc |
| Disable Recall permanently | Affect gaming or GPU performance |
| Free 2–6GB of RAM within 60s of boot | Survive if you manually end the PowerShell process* |
*If the background PowerShell process is killed, simply re-run the installer or restart Windows.
Compatibility
Tested on:
- AMD Ryzen AI 5 340 / Radeon 840M — Windows 11 25H2
- Driver: IPU/XDNA2
IpuMcdmDriver(ipustack.sys) v32.0.203.297
Should work on any Copilot+ PC running Windows 11 24H2 or 25H2 with the WindowsWorkload.Manager package installed.
Background
This fix was developed after extensive live debugging — including WMI process enumeration, module inspection, named pipe analysis, PnP device property queries, and NPU driver investigation — to find the root cause of why 7 identical processes were consuming 4+ GB of RAM on a brand new Copilot+ laptop.
Microsoft has not provided a native way to control this behavior. This script fills that gap until they do.
WorkloadManager is open and free to use, share, and modify.