Excellent post.
I have the same issue. It started appearing in February and Hotfix 927891
does not correct it -- only gives my PC a few extra minutes until svchost.exe
grabs 100% of the cpu and the machine locks up.
Just imagine the impact on many folks with PCs without much horsepower -- MS
pushes Microsoft Update out to the masses, then it starts failing without any
apparent explanation or fix. Users struggle to get their machines back and
many disable the automatic update process. Without auto update on the users
never see notice that Microsoft Update has been fixed...
The evil element could not have written a better scenerio! Granted, I was
making an assumption -- that MS Update will be fixed. What a joke.
--
Hugh
"javaguru" wrote:
> I'd imagine this is something that got broken on the last update and is
> currently affecting a lot of other people. There is nothing complicated
> about my Dell home laptop running XP Home SP2...I barely use it, 8-way
> servers at work are more fun to play with. Anyways, I've had Automatic
> Updates turned on to download the updates and then prompt me to install for
> at least 2 years, with no problems. Yesterday evening (April 10 '07) my
> laptop decided to simply freeze - after a hard boot, it froze again within
> about a minute.
>
> After some considerable effort to track the offending process and make sure
> it's not a virus, I am surprised to find that it is Automatic Updates, which
> runs as a service under svchost.exe -k netsvcs. With the updates turned on
> as I've had them for years, I can see that service starting, and a few
> seconds afterwards the parent svchost process starts clocking 100%,
> effectively hosing the machine. This happens within a minute after startup.
>
> Disabling the Automatic Updates service or simply turning automatic updates
> off in Security Center gives me my computer back. However, this is not an
> ideal solution - that service needs to be running to update even manually,
> and when it's started simply by visiting Microsoft's windows update site, the
> same issue manifests. Basically, whenever the Automatic Updates service
> runs, it hogs all the CPU and thus locks up the machine. I used Process
> Explorer and ran through the same sequence of events 3 times to verify this
> beyond any doubt...it's also the only thing I can use to kill the offending
> svchost process and get control back.
>
> Has anyone else run into this? Do you have a better solution? Please post
> if you do. If you don't, go to Control Panel and disable your Automatic
> Updates through the Security Center right upon startup, then quickly reboot -
> at least you'll be able to use your computer that way.
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