Over the last several days there have been several reports of PCs using Microsoft Update (not Windows Update) of becoming extremely slow. When opening task manager we are seeing svchost.exe consuming 90 to 100% of the CPU time. This is being caused by Microsoft update (the update program that patches Windows as well as other Microsoft Applications like Office). A temporary workaround has been to disable Microsoft Update and go back to using Windows Update. Here are instructions for doing this courtesy of SBS MVP Susan Bradley. You can read her blog here. http://msmvps.com/blogs/bradley/
We’ve seen it on just about everything.
1. On the Microsoft Update site, click Change Settings.
2. Scroll down the page, click to select the Disable Microsoft Update
software and let me use Windows Update only check box, and then click
Apply changes now.
3. You receive the following message:
Windows Automatic Updates will not be able to deliver updates from
Microsoft Update Service.
Are you sure you want to continue?
Click Yes.
source:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/901037
After this is done make sure that you visit officeupdate.microsoft.com to ensure that you are getting patches for the Office Suite as well as for Windows.
Stephen
Â