THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF THE SBS "DIVA"

I've seen two different instances lately with 100% CPU and svchost.  The first is with windows update, but I've also seen where NTP is trying to sync the time and it will be busy for a good long time (i.e. 3 to 4 minutes ).  This occurs whether or not the machine can get to the network to "see" a time server.  

My wife's machine suffers from the windows update lock a home, and three different machines suffer from the NTP lookup at work (the work machines are all using internal WSUS, so I'm not seeing hesitation there).

Thanks,

Tony

As soon as MS's vaunted patching mechanisms are impacted by a flaw that affects more than the tiniest fraction of their user base, they have run out of excuses.  There are no valid excuses for this system to have been broken so badly for MONTHS...none...particularly since it renders misbehaving computers almost useless until attended.  Not only does it break the machines, but it breaks the trust end users, admins and consultants have in MS Update and WSUS.

Yes, we have seen several WinXP SP2 and Windows 2003 Terminal Servers affected by the issue.  So far, the 914810 HotFix resolved the issue (progressively greater RAM usage and CPU spike).

The problem with this issue is that the only visible evidence is a gradual performance degradation and visual feedback if you look at Task Manager.  Most end users do not do that, so we don't know how many PCs at client sites may actually be affected.

We started to have this issue back in August 2006. The issue was quite new at that time, and Google searches didn’t help much. We have tried the 914810 and other solutions found on the web without success. The only reliable solution we have today is not to install WSUS.

So far it has affected several XP SP2 laptops. Can't find 927891 anywhere.

The best I've been able to do is a clunky workaround. I wait for the error messages to pop up, have it debug the 2 error messages. Then I logoff and logon and everything works OK after that until I have to turn off the laptop.

For those calling in and being told that the SVChost.exe hotfix doesn't exist... you might have to do

I've had to walk the end user through System Restore(ws) to resolve what they told me started off by allowing the installation of some updates which admonished them to NOT power off their machine while the updates were being installed.  In each instance, they waited as long as conceivably possible, then ended up forcing the machines off.  Upon repowering and booting, the machines were unresponsive and seemed to never finish painting in the desktop icons.

My resolution was to restore to a system checkpoint prior to the date they told me the wait for updates to finish installing prompt appeared.

Yesterday, when updating two PCs at the office, the SVCHOST.exe was using 100% of the CPU for a long

Yesterday, when updating two PCs at the office, the SVCHOST.exe was using 100% of the CPU for a long

I've got this on almost every computer on my network.  Slower computers it can hang up for 10 minutes at bootup while this resolves.  

I've got the problem on every 2000 and XP system except for the extremely fast ones.  They have the problem as well, but it goes by much quicker.

As we speak, I'm on hold with PSS trying to get the older patch since I only recently learned of the existance of any fix.  They told me that the newer one isn't available yet.

I have ssen this problem on my laptop. I am running Microsoft update. The problems seems to stop after 15-30 minutes. Most of my clients leave there computer running so that they can RWW into there desktops. I contacted MS PPS and recieved two hotfixes KB Article Number(s): 914810 and KB Article Number(s): 916089 The problem has not changed after applying the hotfixes. I am currently hibernating my laptop to avoid the 100% CPU usage. I polled our AZSMBUG.ORG User group and found two other IT companies with clients being impacted with this same issue.

Hi, Came across this website while investigating the same issue.

I've got a site of 40 staff reporting the same issue.

Haven't tried the patches yet, as only noticed the problem within the last day or so.

My company is indeed seeing these problems.  My own internal corp network clients are taking 10 minutes to boot.   I am not even going to tell you how long my PIII 1.2GHz workhorse takes to boot.  Sigh…This makes my job even hardier after I tout WSUS and Windows Update to clients and its importance.  I sell managed services for small biz, and one task is to deal and get machines "green".  I can hardly keep telling the customer, don't worry....those warnings don't mean anything...I was only kidding all those many times in the past....

:-(

Yes, I have clients "still" with this problem.  Most of the time now SVCHOST just never goes away and just keeps consuming memory until the user says "My PC is slow", looking at 1GB consumed by SRVCHOST.  I now have the MS Enterprise platform support team looking into if the hotfix is installed correctly.  All this because I said when I called "This is for an SBS installation", and then I was asked where I got the KB number from (927891).  Makes you wonder?????

Susan has all my details of woe from a listserv, covering many instances, many months and many networks. Along with my clients, I have lost all faith for MS patching. My clients would rather have a computer network that works than one that is slightly more secure and broken. More should be done to resolve this in a better time frame and with a more urgency. PSS however have been helpful.

http://munged link edited by Susan.exe)

Yep, we are still experiencing this problem, have a desktop population of around 5000 but it is only having a limited impact with around 50 affected machines.

Phoned PSS.

Stated that 916089 is superseded by 927891.

E-mailed both hotfixes to me. This is our first client experiencing this issue.

yes some of my customers have this issue.  svchost.exe eating up 170k of memory and sucking up the cpu.

The ones that don't have the issue are the ones that don't patch but practice safe computing.  Some will say safe computing means patching.

I say patching is like taking a revolver and putting one bullet in it and playing russian roulette. one of those spins it going to line up with the hammer and get you.

How many times will the customer put up with? "you told me I have to patch, now I patch and some of my systems are worthless"  How much downtime are they going to live with? How much lost revenue can they afford?  

SVCHOST spike kills several machines here, including my XP SP2 Toshiba Tablet.  It seems to have become progressively worse over a few months and I have now lost days of work time trying to find fix, rebuilding my system and so on!

I started noticing the problem with svchost after I upgraded all machines on network to XP - Most are new duo-core, but for some of the lesser users I reconfigured older ones - the older ones are all taking about 5 minutes to finish booting with the proc at 100% - All newer ones do it too but because they are faster it is not as noticeable, although I suspect that users don't really report it because they are now conditioned to expect slow Windows everything .... No patch, you get screwed, you patch, you get screwed

I to had the same problem.  It was on 2 PC's in a 35 User SBS Site.  However we have sort of fixed our issue.  I installed the 927891 hotfix and it did not fix our problem.  Reboot PC and it goes to 100% after about 3-5 minutes, or run wuauclt /detectnow and it starts almost immediately.

I found the following on another website and tried it and it worked.

http://www.wsus.info/forums/index.php?showtopic=8166&hl=svchost

My process is as follows.

1)Removed Office from PC.

2)Used Office 2003 Resource Kit Removal Wizard to totally remove Office 2003.

(Not sure whether you need to do this.  It would be a real pain if you had to on a large network.)

3)Logged into WSUS on the server and declined all Office Updates.

4)Changed the WSUS to not sync Office Updates with Microsoft.

5)Reinstalled Office 2003 and SP2 on workstation.  Rebooted and no dreaded 100% CPU.

The removal of Office Updates is not an ideal solution, but if it gets the client off of your back and you able to concentrate of other things then great.  Here's hoping MS resolve the issue soon.  However from the posts on www.wsus.info it looks like the problem or a derivative has been around for a while.

Run the Secunia inspection tool and you find that Steve Jobs doesn't care about the security on your

Run the Secunia inspection tool and you find that Steve Jobs doesn't care about the security on your

We've got the same problem here, all older machines are "infected" and it takes about 15-30min to boot. We've just migrated from a Novell enviroment to the W2K3 SBS enviroment. Users already want to go back.

The only thing what helps (for a day or so) is to:

Temporarily stop the automatic updates service. (you should see CPU drop)

Download http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=43264

Run WindowsUpdateAgent20-x86.exe /wuforce

Rename C:\windows\software distribution to C:\windows\software distribution.old

Rename C:\windows\windowsupdate.log to c:\windows\windowsupdate.log.old

restart the automatic updates service.

Hope this helps a little bit. Realy looking forward to a real solution.

Sue:

Add me to your list of folks impacted by this issue.  Our firm is small, but ALL the users are complaining about their boxes slowing down, and they ALL blame our moving to SBS.  Some of them have done their own research and want me to disable Auto Updates entirely! Not a good thing!

Yup it's a problem, our two brand new SBS R2 systems we installed at the end of 06 both started running into the problem. We discovered a   way to seperate the update service into a different SVCHOST process and then set a task to restart once a day that seems to have temporarily fixed the issue on the servers, but we would like a proper fix to the problem.

Add me to the list, every hotfix and workaround I've done hasn't worked. I'm tearing my hair out as all of the employees are noticing degraded performance thanks to what was supposed to be an "upgrade".

Here's one - I re-installed Windows XP Home on my laptop because I bought a new hard drive. I then applied all of the updates - that's when I had the problem mentioned in this blog.  Originally, I thought it was the hard drive (it was about 5 years old, so I thought it was worn out), but the svchost.exe file kept spiking at 99% cpu usage. I noticed this more when either Windows XP or OneCare was attempting to get updates.  To top it all off, I can't get the fix because, according to Microsoft, all of my free support options have been used (which is a load of b.s. but that's a different story). Makes me VERY GLAD I switched over to a Mac as my primary workstation. Take that, Microsoft!!!