If you're a PC gamer who uses an xbox 360 gamepad, you might unwittingly be running a program called Xboxstat.exe, which comes with the official xbox gamepad drivers, and launches itself at bootup. Unlike most background programs, this one consumes a lot of resources. On my system, it frequently hogged up to 13% of the CPU resources. And not just in idle, but even when my PC was working hard and really needed those resources. Others have reported it consuming 50% or even 90% of theirs!
Xboxstat.exe isn't required for the controller to work, and removing it makes no difference to gameplay. I don't know exactly what it does - I believe it collects statistical information about your games for Microsoft. Whatever its intended purpose, it's surely not important enough to warrant slowing down our PCs with massive CPU loads. Get rid of it using the method below.
- Press the windows key, type msconfig.exe and press enter
- Click the startup tab
- Scroll down until you find Microsoft Xbox 360 Accessories (in the Command column it will be something like C:\Program Files\Microsoft Xbox 360 Accessories\Xboxstat.exe), then uncheck its box
- Click ok
- If a popup notifies you that you made changes, tell it not to remind you again, unless you want that annoying popup each time you boot up
- After you next restart, Xboxstat.exe won't clog up your resources any more.