problem connecting windows update - CPU 100% svchost.exe

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Hi,

everythime I try to connect to winduws update, no list of item can be
displayed. The browser stays in "hang status", the svchost process arrives to
100% CPU until it blocks everything. No error reported.

I tried several workaround (deleting software distribution folder, stopping
the firewall). But nothing worked until now! THe connection looks fine. The
service for windowsupdate is correctly running. I really cannot understand.
Anybody who can help, please?

If you want to have it resolved now (and not wait another ~4 weeks):
Download and install KB927891 (v2) links to be found for your Windows
version in http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927891

After you've installed that one, download an install the actual version
of Windows Update Agent 3.0 via
http://download.windowsupdate.com/v7...gent30-x86.exe

I'm assuming you're *not* running Windows Vista and no 64bit version
of any Windows.

I think so.

I'm in the same boat as well with Vista.

My computer will not update anything from Microsoft.

It quit updating about a month ago after updating fine on a regular basis.

Nobody seems to know how to fix it.

I have tried everything I could find on the internet and it still will not
search for updates.

We have been having on ongoing problem with this svchost.exe process related
to Microsoft auto updater. I have tried applying the 927891 patch each time,
and it has resolved the problem on several. However, the last three pcs that
I have worked on that have had this issue would not run free up after
applying it. I have had to tell the users that they will need to run updates
manually for now, and am becoming quite annoyed with this issue. If you
reference the KB article, the end results that they are trying to achieve do
not look promising to begin with. This being a main component of Windows, I
would think they would have this resolved ASAP, but it is still an issue for
us four months later.

And Windows Update Agnet 3.0 has been installed too? *Both*, KB927891
*and* WUA 3.0 are needed to fix the svchost permanent 100% CPU usage
in conjunction with wuauclt.exe running.

Are there any Personal Firewall applications installed on these
machines and/or any design changing "Vista Packs" and the like?
Did you try running "netsh winsock reset" under "Run" in the Start
menu and rebooted the machine? Did that help at least temporary?

Abruptly on Thursday (5/8/2008) my wife's laptop, a 16 month-old dual-core
ThinkPad with XP SP2, began an extended run at 100% CPU like many of the
other incidents described in this article, most notably that of MoosieAZ. I
traced the problem to an instance of the svchost.exe process and am dismayed
to report that it finally retired into the background after 47 minutes of CPU
time. Further, it executed several hundred BILLION I/O Read Bytes. Yep,
MINUTES and BILLIONS. I can't possibly imagine what operation could consume
such resources and still run to apparent completion. Seems like a process
that asks "Are these few/dozen/hundreds DLLs up to date?" should be able to
answer that question in a mere fraction of the time . . . and resources.

This behavior repeated itself everytime she restarted the laptop. (This
occurs frequently, since her habit is to turn off the machine when she's
done with any usage session. I realize some pain could be avoided by leaving
the laptop running, but that's not the point.) After several 47 minute
cycles on subsequent start-ups, the computer seemed to have been happy with
the work it performed and, per the System Event Log, indicated that about a
dozen Office 2003 updates were SCHEDULED for installation at 3:00 a.m. on
5/10/2008. Most of the updates seemed to be security related.

We left the laptop on over night so it could plow through the 3:00 a.m.
installation, which logs indicate it accomplished successfully, though I have
no CPU or I/O stats to report.

I thought we were clear of the problem, but the same 100% CPU behavior began
again this morning (Sunday, 5/11/2008). Armed with a little more knowledge
of the potential culprit, I was able to confirm that a svchost.exe instance
was indeed racking up the CPU and I/O, the former of which rivaled the System
Idle Process. From Process Explorer (procexp.exe) I confirmed that
'wuauserv' was a member of the svchost instance and was able to successfully
kill 'wuauserv'. The system recovered in a matter of seconds and the
computer returned to its normal responsiveness.

I can confirm that KB 927891 was delivered on 5/23/2007, not too long after
the initial post on this thread and presumably as a result of Windows Update
performing properly. I'm not certain whether it was successfully installed,
though. The KB927891.log file indicates fourteen files were copied, but the
log also contains twenty consecutive lines of "KB927891 encountered an error:
The update.ver file is not correct." near the beginning and scattered other
"failure" messages throughout.

Regarding any updating of Windows Update Agent to 3.0, I can only report the
dates and internal versions of the following "wuau..." files in
C:\Windows\System32:

wuauclt.exe 07/30/2007 07:19 PM 7.0.6000.381
(winmain(wmbla).070730-1740)
wuauclt1.exe 05/26/2005 08:16 AM 5.8.0.2469 built by:
lab01_n(wmbla)
wuaueng.dll 07/30/2007 07:19 PM 7.0.6000.381
(winmain(wmbla).070730-1740)
wuaueng1.dll 05/26/2005 08:16 AM 5.8.0.2469 built by:
lab01_n(wmbla)
wuauserv.dll 08/04/2004 08:00 AM 5.4.3790.2180
(xpsp_sp2_rtm.040803-2158)

I present this information in as much detail as I can muster because it
seems our symptoms align well with described problem, but it disturbs me that
most of the posts on this thread date back to May 2007. I would have
expected that Microsoft would have resolved the problem in less that twelve
months. The laptop has been on Automatic Updates since shortly after we
received it, although I only installed Office 2003 on it a few weeks ago.

I am reluctant to proceed with the (re?)installation of KB 927891 and update
to Windows Update Agent 3.0 described earlier because it seems like it is old
guidance. How do we get this problem resolved?

This is happening to me as well - and it just started in the middle of last
week. Automatic Updates is the offender - I disabled it in MSCONFIG and all
is well (other than the fact that Automatic Updates is disabled).

SVCHOST consumes 100% CPU and it starts eating memory until it reaches >
100MB.

I think im in the same boat here with a laptop which after an update on 19th
May (WAU had been disabled since april time so hadnt run or been used) is now
going 100% CPU usage during update scans.

Its tied to another issue my machine is now experiencing, which happened on
my last laptop after it too hit the 100% CPU during the update process when
the problem first arose prior to Update agent 3.0 being released around a
year ago. Both machines now keep hitting the disk every second even when
nothing is running and im not using the machine, with periods of the machines
fans kicking in even when Task Manager shows no apparent CPU usage. Any small
spike in CPU usage also causes the fan to kick in where it used to wait a
while unless it was 100% usage for a shorter period would cause it to kick
in. For anyone interested my other post is -
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/e...f-c433a4da9383

So im interested in any conclusions people come to.

Tony

From posts in various groups across the net, and from personal experience, I
think this problem has run it's course. It appears that starting on May 7th
(give or take a day) the contents of the C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution
folder, the Windows Update service, and the CA AntiVirus real-time scanner
(engine 31.4) collided.

Excluding installer file types from A/V scans, or snoozing the A/V, or
deleting/renaming the C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution, OR a combination of
these tricks did seem to resolve the issue. Then about a week after it all
began, CA released engine 31.5 via their automatic update and life has
returned back to whatever the hell is normal.

P.S. Make sure you remove any exclusions for CA A/V that you may have
implemented as a circumvention.

Hello, I know this post is old but we started to have the exact same issue
as
Chuck discribe and I am disapointed to se that their is not a resolution on
this or that I have not found one yet. THis is an issue we are having on
over 10 Windows XP PRO SP3 all up do date pc's . As soon as we disable
Windows update all workes well. But in my opinion this is not a solution. It
is a temporarely fix.

Does anyone have this issue still and is their a resent solution we tried
everything on this post and other post to no avail.

What post ?