WinXP: Update service at 100% CPU | The Coffeehouse

littleguru
<3 Seattle

Hi gals/guys. Perhaps somebody can help me with this here.

I'm having a problem with my parent's laptop lately. They have Windows XP (with all latest updates installed, includes IE 7). Now (since a few days) each time when I try to install updates or check for updates (via the update web site) the process that hosts the update service goes up to 100% and stays there forever. The problem is that this happens also if Windows automatically checks for updates! It causes all the programs to hang, because the service somehow eats up all the CPU power. IE 7 hangs, explorer hangs, if I try to open a program, it just doesn't open. When I terminate the process that hosts the update service, all the programs (I tried to open earlier) pop up immediately, IE 7 recovers, explorer recovers...

Somebody experiencing the same? What's the problem here? Is the update database corrupt or what's this?

I have tried to check for spyware & viruses, but there seems to be none on the laptop. I even did the full spyware & virus check also in Window's safe mode.

SecretSoftware
Code to live, but Live to code.

Cure;)

DCMonkey
Monkey see, monkey do, monkey will destroy you!

It sounds like the same problem I and others describe over here.

Secret, thanks for the link. Unfortunately the supplied hotfix didn't fix the problem.

ZippyV
Fired Up

Did you already contacted support to obtain the hotfix?

DCMonkey
Monkey see, monkey do, monkey will destroy you!

ZippyV wrote:
Did you already contacted support to obtain the hotfix?

The article said a fix from another article superceded this one. That article had links to the fix so I downloaded one of those.

Also, WU finally appears to have downloaded this month's patches.

After installing them and rebooting, WU only pegged the CPU for <1 minute or so, which I believe is it's usual performance. Not that I find that acceptable either. So maybe it is "fixed".

Is there a way to lower the WU process priority and run it myself or something?

DCMonkey
Monkey see, monkey do, monkey will destroy you!

The above-mentioned patch didn't fix my home system either. But switching back to Windows Update (instead of Microsoft Update) seemed to do the trick.

You can do this by going to the Windows Update site and clicking "Change Settings" on the left. There should then be a gray box at the bottom where you can revert to Windows Update.

I guess I'll have to go back to manually updating Office until MU gets their sh*t together.

Ah, its nice to have my system back.

cheong

I've applied the patch and my system's CPU usage only goes up briefly then drops down to about 2%. Sounds like the performance of the patch varies between systems.

Btw, my working PC is Celeron D (i.e.: single core) only. Don't know if it matters.

Ion Todirel
buuu

littleguru wrote:
Hi gals/guys. Perhaps somebody can help me with this here.

I'm having a problem with my parent's laptop lately. They have Windows XP (with all latest updates installed, includes IE 7). Now (since a few days) each time when I try to install updates or check for updates (via the update web site) the process that hosts the update service goes up to 100% and stays there forever. The problem is that this happens also if Windows automatically checks for updates! It causes all the programs to hang, because the service somehow eats up all the CPU power. IE 7 hangs, explorer hangs, if I try to open a program, it just doesn't open. When I terminate the process that hosts the update service, all the programs (I tried to open earlier) pop up immediately, IE 7 recovers, explorer recovers...

Somebody experiencing the same? What's the problem here? Is the update database corrupt or what's this?

I have tried to check for spyware & viruses, but there seems to be none on the laptop. I even did the full spyware & virus check also in Window's safe mode.

i have the same problem on my desktop, but since i only use my laptop, i didn't bother to find what's wrong

questron

I have the same problem on my laptop... I tried everything I could find on the net, but the only thing that really worked was to delete the contents of

[WINDIR]\SoftwareDistribution\DataStore

Maybe this helps.

Greetings,
chris

freney

I had the same problem on my mother's computer. No microsoft patch or other cure I found on the net had any effect (besides deactivating Microsoft Updates and go with Windows Updates). She also has a Celeron D processor. Any idea why this would occur?

littleguru
<3 Seattle

This really looks like a Windows Update bug to me. I have deleted this DataStore directory now. Everything was fine. Next I did an update check with the Windows Update web site. The thing started to rebuild the DataStore. After having it run for some time we are back at 100% CPU usage. It seems that some of the latest updates crash the engine!

I have also installed the MSI.DLL hotfix! But that hotfix doesn't seem to fix it!

Anybody from Microsoft Update team here?

freney

I have taken my mother's computer apart (well, just the OS) and the problem occurs only when using Microsoft Updates (not Windows Updates) and with Office 2003 installed.

ZippyV
Fired Up

Installed the msi patch, no improvements. It still takes 10 minutes to check the computer.

littleguru
<3 Seattle

What I have seen is that the update KB932330 (Junk mail filter update for Outlook 2003) is pushing the CPU up to 100% - it's also always failing when being installed.

Edit: Oh holy crap. I tried to download the update manually. I needed to validate Office 2003 (genuine thing) and it's saying that my office is not genuine. That's not true. It is a genuine copy!

cheong

littleguru wrote:
What I have seen is that the update KB932330 (Junk mail filter update for Outlook 2003) is pushing the CPU up to 100% - it's also always failing when being installed.

Edit: Oh holy crap. I tried to download the update manually. I needed to validate Office 2003 (genuine thing) and it's saying that my office is not genuine. That's not true. It is a genuine copy!

So any possibility Microsoft Update is asking for update because it think it's genuine, but the update site don't let it to download because the site validation think it's not, so the negotiation makes the CPU 100% usage? :O

deanhuff

questron,

deleting the files in [WINDIR]\SoftwareDistribution\DataStore worked for me. thanks!

vesuvius
La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans

I fixed this on a friends pc this monday gone. I can't for the Life of Riley locate the article on MSDN that showed me the fix. the article with the fix has step 1 of this article but a different step 2. The problem on the pc I fixed was that it was trying to install an IE6 update on a mchine with IE7 and this kept on failing. I deselected the option to update this patch but the problem was still there.

The solution was to reinstall the automatic updates. I checked that the services had started in services.msc. the clicked on RUN->CMD and entered command to stop something (sorry for the vagueness). I then clicked on START->RUN and entered 4 or 5 seperate instructions. I also navigated to the c:\windows folder and renamed the update folder to oldSomthing then entered a command in RUN that installed a new automatic update folder.

I will update you if I locate the article. Also make sure your windows firewall is on.

ZippyV
Fired Up

Can we get an answer from Microsoft on this problem?

ZippyV
Fired Up

Microsoft has just released a patch on WindowsUpdate and the issue should be fixed now.

CannotResolveSymbol
Microsoft: Who do you want to execute today?

See also KB 927891... there will be two updates required to completely fix the issue: one is being released now, and the other (a new automatic updates client) is being released in June. So we're still a ways off from this issue being completely resolved.