wuauclt.exe corrupted

[Steve BB]

I am using E-Machine with Windows XP. Don’t know what went wrong on this system my Windows Update use to run as long as my system is on. No matter I turn it off, it keeps running in the background. I keep killing wuauclt.exe from Task Manager but it keeps coming up after a minute or so.

I thought It could be because of any Virus or malware, tried running deep scan but dint found anything malicious. Even system restore was unable to fix the problem. Is it just me or somebody else have came through this problem ever? Please provide me any fix to get rid of the same. It is eating up 99% of resources and hence my applications response very slowly.

Please help.

[MikeY007]

It is not compulsory that the reason behind slow response would be wuauclt.exe, there could be some another reason as well. Also let me tell you that thought I have turned off Off Automatic Updates options on my system but still it runs in the services and hence the wuauclt.exe won't be running all the time. Anyways, I think you should go through the following LB article describing How to configure and use Automatic Updates in Windows XP:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=306525

Hope it helps.

[Steve BB]

HI appreciated your help MikeY007 but i'm sure that the problem is due to wauaclt.exe because when i go to task manager i can see wauaclt.exe is eating up 99% of my resources under processes tab.

What else you think can be the cause of problem?