X61s Win 7 64 Home 50% CPU Utilization Idle

[Pete B]

I have a svchost process that keeps poping up, anyone else see this?
Causes the system to lag, fan to run, battery to run down faster.

I've tried Rkill and all sorts of malware scans.

I'm going to get process explorer on it next and see what I can find.

Anyone else seeing this? I think it might have something to do with the
Win 10 push.

[Dekks]

Ive seen that on a Vista X61 machine which is having issues with windows update, i'm still looking for a fix.

[theterminator93]

If Windows Update is set to automatically check for (or download, or install) updates, the Windows Update service will use 100% of one core shortly after starting up as it "checks for updates". If there are a lot of updates available, it will take a LONG time (for example, a clean install of 7 on my FrankenPad took 8 hours overnight to check for updates, of which there were about 220, with a T9300 CPU) to finish checking and finally present you with the option to download or install.

If you're not interested in updates, you can disable the service or change your Windows Update settings to never check for updates. With little or no available updates, I usually see the update service relax its grip on the core after about 10 minutes or so.

[Pete B]

Thanks, I was very suspicious of windows update and in fact when I ran the
Windows update troubleshooter, and waited sometimes hours for it to finish
then I don't see the issue, but then in a very short time it is back.
I have all of my systems set to:
"check for updates but let me choose when to download and install them"
I think what has happened is that checking can take hours now for some
reason and as you say, just checking saturates one core - pathetic, another
wonderful MS feature. I believe that it is deliberate to push people to update
to Win 10.
Or, I suppose I can set it to never check for updates and then just do it
myself when ready. What is odd is that my other systems at least 4 are not
doing this and they are set the same way - I don't use the X61s as much.

[xsixt]

This exact problem is affecting my X60T (Win 7 x86 Pro). I have the same settings "check for updates but let me choose when to download and install them", with 220ish updates waiting. The machine just sits there for hours trying to install them with no success. Even tried a "hotfix" which did nothing. The high cpu utlisation @ idle problem does not occur on my T420s (W7 x64 Pro) however, but it has had more updates installed.

I agree that it's a push to force Win 10 down our throats. I went through the following list to eliminate some of supposed spyware/telemetry updates. Some where already on the T420s, but I don't think any were installed on the X60T - hence I feel like that's the reason why the update is failing because I'm rejecting MS's offer to spy on my system
(http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r303483 ... reful-with)

Is there some way to disable/skip automatic checking on boot up, and then select updates manually? I wouldn't know as I've always used the above setting.

[theterminator93]

Fire up services.msc via a Run command (or enter it in the search box of the start menu), then towards the bottom you can set the startup type of Windows Update to Disabled. When you are ready to have it do its thing, set the startup type to Manual or one of the Automatic options, and tell it to start. Once you've finished your updating, you can set it back to disabled.

[Pete B]

Of all my systems the X61s is the only one running win 7 64 Home, the
others are all Pro, so perhaps home is getting a low priority on their servers,
and perhaps are the ones that MS feels they can pressure the most into the
Win 10 upgrade. I'm really tempted to put Pro on it and see what happens.

[Dekks]

Thanks for the info, i don't use that machine much, maybe once a month to run updates. Methinks that is the heart of my problem.

[Pete B]

I think it is worth leaving them on overnight especially if you just kick off updates,
let it do its thing and finish or kick off the update troubleshooter.
But like I said, even when mine is up to date within a day it is slow again.

[theterminator93]

My "solution" would be to update it periodically and disable the Windows Update service between update sessions.

You could also give this a try: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/971058

[Pete B]

That sure is complicated, they need to make a script for that!
I take it that it does more than the troubleshoot windows update built in feature.

Thanks again for the tips.

It has finally settled down after I installed 4 new important updates, and 1 recommended
not a lot, but utilization was high even when just the 1 recommended was not installed.
Next time I see it high again, I'm going to try setting updates to never check and see if
that works rather than setting the services directly.

[MrMaguire]

There's no need to disable/enable the Windows Update service. Just set Windows Update to "Check for updates but let me choose whether to download and install them". That way, you can just open Windows Update when it's convenient.

Installing the latest version of the Windows Update Agent is supposed to solve this business with svchost.exe. So far that hasn't worked for me. If you think 50% utilization on a low voltage Core 2 Duo is bad, try 100% and agonising sluuggishness on a Pentium M.

[Pete B]

There's no need to disable/enable the Windows Update service. Just set Windows Update to "Check for updates but let me choose whether to download and install them". That way, you can just open Windows Update when it's convenient.

Several of us have already said that we are already set to "Check for updates but let me choose whether to download and install them" and yet we are still having problems. Never check for updates might work.

[MrMaguire]

Oh right, yeah. The Never Check option will most likely work, though I haven't tried it yet. I've been meaning to do that.

[shawross]

I believe MS is playing hardball with Windows 7 lately as they try to push people to Windows 10. On my T43 I had similar problems and it is only a machine I run every now and then.
What I did is install Windows Updates Manually - Google is your friend

Then disable Windows Updates as it has been described.

Then I disabled not only Win Updates but other Microsoft Services which I don't think I need.

Best to do an image of your system before you play around too much.

The results are a faster system but a warning stating my copy of Win 7 is not legit.

I am happy with the system atm but my next step will be to go to a Linux distro.

Come 2020 for the 3 Thinkpads I have Licences for I will leave MS ........

[theterminator93]

By the way - and for whatever it's worth (from http://superuser.com/questions/890038/w ... te-so-slow)

The checking for updates part is so slow because:

Windows 7 uses Component-Based Servicing, which means Windows Update has to work ridiculously hard to determine file and component dependencies/inter-dependencies, maintain side-by-side versions of older files/components, while still making it possible to uninstall individual updates/components but without breaking any other updates/components, all the while taking into account supercedence and god knows what else. The code that does all this must be hellishly complex.

Windows 7 64-bit has to maintain both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of each update.

Windows has to maintain both GDR and LDR versions of each update, which means on Windows 7 64-bit you get 32-bit GDR, 32-bit LDR, 64-bit GDR, 64-bit LDR for each update.

The code behind Windows Update is highly inefficient, probably due to its conceptual complexity. My observations over the last few years are that, as the total number of released updates has increased, update check time has increased in an almost exponential way. To me that's indicative of some kind of recursive algorithms being employed, perhaps to determine superscedence or resolve dependencies.

Unfortunately for us, Microsoft don't like talking about Windows internals so we end up having to figure it out for ourselves or speculate.

[MrMaguire]

There's something really rotten about the Windows Update system in Windows NT 6.x. NT 5.x was a lot more efficient. It doesn't take an absolute age to search for available updates, at least.

[theterminator93]

Well, coming from a fresh XP w/SP3 install, it usually takes several hours to collect all the updates available, depending on the CPU (never seen it happen faster than a couple hours, but then again I've never put XP on anything newer than a Core 2). Best to wait overnight on a Pentium III.

[MrMaguire]

A couple of hours? That's ridiculous! I do fresh XP installs all the time. It usually takes 3-5 minutes to display the list of updates. And this is usually on Pentium 4/M/Core (2) Duo hardware. I am using updated installation media though.

[theterminator93]

Interesting. A while back I was refurbishing Dell D610s with Pentium M 1.86 (or similar) chips to sell on eBay and I was using Dell OS recovery disks (XP SP3) to get the OS on to them. Windows Update would come back with the BITS update within a few minutes, but after it did that and checked for the second round of 19x or 2xx updates to install, it took more than just a couple hours. In fact, when I was setting up my initial deployment software image (this was a year or so before XP got the axe from MS support) it caught me off guard as it appeared to be "stuck" checking for updates. I started looking into troubleshooting, corrupt service, reinstall the OS using different installer media, etc. to no avail - then I finally just let it run overnight once and came back in the morning with all the updates ready to download.

[MrMaguire]

I've done tonnes of Windows installs on Dell Latitude D610 and D810 laptops. If you're using the actual Windows CD that comes bundled with Dell computers, that's what I'm using too, except I slipstreamed the Unofficial Service Pack 4 into the media with nLite.

[theterminator93]

That may be why. I've noticed the 'check for updates' process goes much faster when there aren't HUNDREDS of updates pending. I bet more than just a handful of those post SP3 updates that my machines spend hours checking for are slipstreamed into that install disc you've got.

[MrMaguire]

having the latest version of the Windows Update Agent really helps too, which can be downloaded.

[xsixt]

Fire up services.msc via a Run command (or enter it in the search box of the start menu), then towards the bottom you can set the startup type of Windows Update to Disabled. When you are ready to have it do its thing, set the startup type to Manual or one of the Automatic options, and tell it to start. Once you've finished your updating, you can set it back to disabled.

Thank you good sir

If some who have tried this update agent / a few other tweaks can report back to see if the problem is reduced. For now, I am disabling windows updater for now because this is a real nuisance.

As much as I love W7, if it doesn't get resolved I wonder if it's time to give Zorin OS a go...