svchost.exe turns mad due to windows xp autoupdate

Did you have problems with your Windows XP computer becoming very very slow ? If you pressed Alt-Ctrl-Del (the three finger exercise so common to all windows users), and looked at the running processes in Task Manager, you might see the problem.

Sometimes there might be a virus (I'll write about finding viruses here (http://johndasfundas.blogspot.com or at http://www.fundazone.com (Computer Virus hunting) soon)

But even Windows XP AutoUpdate thingie can do things even a virus won't do !

If that's the problem, here's the Windows XP autoupdate madness fix.

First, download Process Explorer from here:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/ProcessExplorer.mspx

That program will work better than the Task manager and help you find what things are running. A lot of the time this is caused by a virus on the system.

For a quick fix attempt, you might want to try running an sfc /purgecache followed by an sfc /scannow from the run button in Start menu. Though you may need your Windows disk handy, and OEM restore disks don't generally work (although Dell ones usually do, and a few others)

Here's what some people said :

About forty instances of the process began running, sucking up all of my CPU. For some reason they were kicked up to a high priority as well, although the original was not.

I've been haunted by the same problem before. After doing some research, i found out that the culprit is Windows Update. The proof is when i disable Automatic Update, svchost.exe will stop being frenzy. However, when i turn on Automatic Updates again, the problem went on. Somehow, i just couldn't understand why Windows XP establishes a connection with Windows Update server on every startup.

Anyway, after so long, Microsoft has finally released a hotfix for this problem. You can download the hotfix here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/916089/


Another problem :

Windows Updates gave an update for the graphics card (NVIDA driver update).

This update causes the following problem:

No problems till reaching the black windows loading screen. Instead of the welcome screen, u get a great little error where the monitor stopped working, black screen and gave an error that reported an improper frequency range, malformed display configuration, or just shut off completely.

Booting in safe mode works fine. You cant boot normal at all! Perform a system restore to just before that update, after that update again and make sure you uncheck this update and click not to notify about it again (you have to custom install rather then express)