A Windows 11 service you never asked for is making your laptop run warmer and die sooner

Published Aug 5, 2026, 8:00 PM EDT Based in rural Minnesota, Brian Burgess worked in IT for 10 years before finding his passion for writing about consumer technology. Brian earned his degree in computer and network technology in 2000. He held various IT positions, including help desk support, router installations for IBM, database administration, and other associate network administration roles. He's been a personal technology journalist for 18 years and has written thousands of articles about Microsoft products and services, Android, iOS, streaming, and more. He has written for notable tech sites including XDA, InformationWeek, How-To Geek, Byte, groovyPost, and others. When he is away from the keyboard, you will hear him playing guitar, working outdoors, and watching Star Trek. Have you ever wondered why your laptop is running warmer than you'd like? You might think it is just the hardware struggling to run the apps you are using. But it is also Windows itself that is causing it — even on high-performance systems. Unfortunately, Microsoft has added the diagtrack service you probably don't want, which can cause your laptop to run hotter and may eventually fail sooner than you want. Luckily, it can be disabled, and I'll describe what it is and how you can turn it off so you can get more years of use out of your machine. The service you don't need Diagnostics Tracking Service (Diagtrack) Microsoft is well-known for adding apps and features to Windows that you really don't want or need. For instance, I often rag on Copilot — but that is low-hanging fruit. I can address it at another time, since it is a front-facing feature that can easily be disabled. Diagnostics Tracking Service (Diagtrack), on the other hand, is an under-the-hood service that the company first added to Windows 7 for diagnostic tracking of system use. It is a service you might not be aware of that runs in the background and periodically collects usage data and sends it back to the mothership, which can cause spikes in CPU usage and generate more heat in your system — especially laptops. Laptops are most affected because they have limited cooling compared to desktop systems. Diagtrack is a service that might not cause excessive heating alone. However, it does when combined with services such as SysMain. The service will wake up, send crash dumps, app-use signals, and other diagnostic data to Microsoft. When it does that, it runs along with other processes and related tasks and usually shows up as CPU and Disk spikes in Task Manager. It typically does it once a day, usually after startup, and that is when fans will run and the laptop will start to get warmer. It collects OS and app-level usage on your Windows 10 or 11 system. It also collects your device and hardware driver status, Wi-Fi use, peripheral details, app and feature use, system health and errors, performance metrics, and inking and typing specs. So, there is a lot of work Diagtrack needs to do to collect all the telemetry on your system, and when you combine all of it, it can cause overheating on laptops. Service renamed How to find it If you are reading this and ready to disable the service for improved performance, you might be wondering why you don't see it and where to turn it off. Microsoft actually renamed the service in 2015 to "Connected User Experiences and Telemetry." It's basically a fluffy rename by the company for Diagtrack, which had negative connotations with users skeptical about their activity being tracked. What's more irksome is that the company didn't publicly announce the rename and was eventually discovered by some tech sleuths at the time. It made the community more skeptical of the vague renaming of the telemetry tracking service. To add to the turmoil, the Windows 10 "Threshold 2" turned the service back on for users who had already had it disabled on their system. A bad move by the company indeed. Disable the Diagtrack service Save your laptop now Since Microsoft flubbed the telemetry tracking service so badly, and because it makes your laptop run warmer and shortens its life, it's time to disable it. There are a few ways you can turn it off, and you can do it however works best for you. The most straightforward way is to hit the Windows key -> type services.msc -> press Enter. Find Connected User Experiences and Telemetry -> right-click -> stop the service -> set to Disabled -> Apply -> OK. It's also possible to turn it off via the Registry by heading to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\DataCollection and set the AllowTelemetry DWORD to 0. If it isn't there, you can create the value and set the value to 0. Once you do that, restart your laptop. If you are running Windows Pro or higher, you can also disable it via Group Policy: Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Data Collection and Preview Builds, and set it to disabled. It's also possible to stop it immediately by running PowerShell as Administrator and running the following: Stop-Service -Name DiagTrack -Force Set-Service -Name DiagTrack -StartupType Disabled For most users, turning it off via Services.msc is the easiest, and with it disabled, you will breathe additional life into your laptop. Not only will you help save it from running warm and stop your fan from constantly spinning, but there should also be a performance bump to the overall Windows experience. Save your laptop from a service overheating it The Connected User Experience and Telemetry, formerly Diagtrack, doesn't collect what you're doing on your laptop or typing on your system, like the messages you are sending to people or which apps you have open. However, it is hurting your laptop by causing it to run warmer than it should and shortening its lifespan. It's not critical to the operation of your Windows device, and since it's making it run warmer, there is no reason not to disable it.