[Win7] Windows Update constantly eating CPU since Tuesday's updates.

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jimnms

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Mar 15, 2003
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I have two Win7 machines and both started doing this Tuesday. One is my main desktop/gaming machine, the other is a mix of a Media Center and home server. They're both setup different as to how and when they update. On my desktop I have it set to notify me of updates (which it stopped doing months ago) and generally manually install them Wednesday or Thursday to make sure everything goes OK before the other machine gets them. The other machine installs them automatically on Sunday.

When I turned on my desktop this past Wednesday, the svchost.exe process that handles Windows Update started eating up 25% (one whole core) of CPU, which it usually does when it checks for updates. It generally stops after a few minutes, but three hours later it was still going. I remote logged into my other machine and it too had the svchost.exe process going, and it wasn't even scheduled to update.

On my desktop, I went through the steps to reset Windows update by following this guide. Once I restarted, it went back to chewing up CPU time. I opened the Windows Update and tried to install the updates, but it sat there showing downloading updates 0%. I just left it running while I had to go out and do some errands. I came back about 4-5 hours later and it was still sitting at downloading updates 0% and eating up CPU time. While I was searching for ways to fix it, around an hour later it finally began to download the updates and installed them, and so far it seems to be fine. The CPU eating on the other machine also finally stopped about the same time.

Today though, when I remote logged into the other machine, svchost.exe was going at it again. This machine runs 24/7 and I don't need it running up my electricity bill because of Windows Update, so I decided to manually install the updates rather wait for it to do it Sunday. Just like on my desktop, when I started the update, it sat at downloading 0% for hours before finally installing them.

My desktop does not have any of the Win10 updates installed. The other machine does, but I have made the registry change to disable OS updates and disabled the GWX tasks in task manager because it runs Windows Media Center for recording TV and I don't want it updating.

Is anyone else having this problem? I haven't seen any complaints anywhere about this past Tuesday's Windows Update causing problems, but it seems odd that it happened on both of my Win7 machines. So far after installing the updates, the CPU consumption stopped, but I don't want Windows Update doing this every month, eating up CPU time until I manually install the updates and taking hours to update.
 
Microsoft hasn't been doing anything but fucking up Windows Update for Windows 7 users (and 8/8.1 users to lesser degrees) in a pretty blatant attempt to push people into giving up on Windows 7 (because they want you to believe it's basically obsolete and useless now which of course is an absolute lie) by making it so frustrating to use, especially when it comes to being updated with the latest security patches and whatever. For the moment there's realistically nothing you as an end user can do except "take it like a man" I suppose, not sure how else to put it delicately.

I think it's pretty sad what they're doing to loyal Windows users, but they have their own very different agenda now with Windows 10 and the rest of us that simply have no use for that operating system are being lambasted constantly with the crap they're putting us through just to keep Windows 7 updated - I mean, they state they'll support it till 2020 but I have to wonder just how many people have jumped ship to Windows 10 so far because they're simply ignorant of what's actually going on with the crap that Microsoft is pulling.

I haven't personally seen any issues with my machine but it has none of the "infected" (which is as good a word as any considering) Windows Updates which will try to get Windows 10 installed or at least force some notifications on the end user to get Windows 10 installed at some point. I take it upon myself to ensure that I check out each update they post either at the Knowledge Base itself or I'll check forums where people are doing a lot more research into this stuff and see what appears to be "safe" to install and what is best avoided like the plague.

Unfortunately, I'm in the minuscule minority in that respect, even around here at this forum where a lot of people are like me (disclaimer: assumption incoming): technologically adept and on top of things with respect to all this Windows Update bullshit.

Sad to say there's really not much you can do but hope enough people complain about the svchost.exe issue that another hotfix/update is posted soon to address yet another thing Microsoft has broken pretty much on purpose and according to plan.

I did a clean install yesterday for a client and here are the only updates I installed for him after the install and before I even got online with that machine (these were downloaded from the KB or from the Catalog manually and saved for offline installation):

image.png


That's it, just those, and with those Windows Update seems to not hang for really long periods of time, no more than about 10 minutes at most when checking for updates that first time after a clean install. I can't say if they'll affect a current install that might have a bunch of other updates already going, but that's what I've found to be useful to alleviate some of the ridiculous delays.
 
I've had this issue often when I do a fresh windows 7 install, each time checking for updates takes hours with a core pegged. I usually just install the roll-up package (Microsoft Update Catalog) and that makes it current as of May of this year. That seems to help a lot.

But after that, I usually just have updates set to auto and I don't recall ever seeing this as a significant issue in that context. That includes some really old computers that I've managed to get 7 running well on including old single-core Pentium-4 and Pentium-M computers, etc, where it would be VERY obvious if the processor was bogged down.
 
I've experienced this on a fresh install of Windows 7, it wasn't the CPU that was pegged, it was Windows Update eating all the available memory (there was only 2 gig). It was so bad that the laptop in question appeared to completely freeze, although it hadn't frozen, it was just running so slow it was virtually unresponsive.

I applied the usual patches that are supposed to fix the issue, they did nothing. In the end I manually applied all the updates I could and that seemed to rectify the issue.
 
BulletDust said:
I've experienced this on a fresh install of Windows 7, it wasn't the CPU that was pegged, it was Windows Update eating all the available memory (there was only 2 gig). It was so bad that the laptop in question appeared to completely freeze, although it hadn't frozen, it was just running so slow it was virtually unresponsive.

I applied the usual patches that are supposed to fix the issue, they did nothing. In the end I manually applied all the updates I could and that seemed to rectify the issue.
Click to expand...

same thing happened on a few laptops I have here as well after doing fresh installs. CPU is at 50% load and WU using 1.4GB of ram
 
The KB3161608 update was pushed a few days ago (after the post I made above) and should address most if not all the issues but I still install those updates I mentioned above and now I'll add that one too and see what happens. Not too sure about the KB3161647 update, guess I'll do some testing with that one as well since it appears you have to install the KB3161608 first to make use of it.
 
This happens on all my fresh installs, laptops and desktops. I just let them run overnight and use a different machine, it finishes and installs all the updates eventually.

What the F*** is it doing that's so CPU intesive? No idea, the fact that it takes longer to fully update Windows 7 than it does to assemble and configure a whose system is retarded.

Imagine what they'll do to Windows 10 once it's no longer part for their future agenda.


I use Never 10 to keep the auto upgrade horses--t at bay, but I'm uneasy using 3rd party programs like that, though that's what MS is forcing me to do.
 
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Tiberian said:
The KB3161608 update was pushed a few days ago (after the post I made above) and should address most if not all the issues but I still install those updates I mentioned above and now I'll add that one too and see what happens. Not too sure about the KB3161647 update, guess I'll do some testing with that one as well since it appears you have to install the KB3161608 first to make use of it.
Click to expand...

I didn't get time to reply until now, stuff happened. I looked on my two systems and had all of the updates you posted except KB3156417. It wasn't available on Windows Update, which is odd, because I thought those update rollups always came down as recommended or optional updates.
 
As a sidenote - having the computer run 24/7 and mentioning electricity bill worries are a bit paradoxal.
 
I just had this problem on a Win7Pro machine that hadn't done any updates in a few months.
First, I installed KB31028010 manually. That didn't fix it.
Then I installed KB3161608 manually. That fixed it. The rest of the updates were downloaded and installed successfully quickly after that.
 
My niece has been asking me to fix her notebook for a couple of months. She said her fan was broken and it would overheat and turn off. She kept forgetting to bring it with her when she came over, but yesterday I had to go to her house. It turns out it was this Windows Update bug. She never used the notebook long enough for it to finish checking for or installing updates. It's only a dual core AMD, and the Windows Update process was maxing out one CPU core the whole time it was on. It turns out the fan works fine, she was just using it on her bed so it didn't get good ventilation and it would overheat. I set it on a table and after a couple of hours it finally finished checking for updates. There were over 60 updates totaling 300+MB, so it's been a while since it successfully installed any updates. Once I started to install the updates it sat on 0% for a few more hours. I couldn't wait for it to finish, so I told her to leave it alone and let it finish even if she had to leave it overnight. I doubt she listened and probably tried to watch YouTube or play a game on it after I left. Once those updates are installed, it will probably have to go through it again to get more updates before I can finally get the update(s) that fixes it.
 
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