Harry Waldron - Corporate IT Security

During the last half of 2007, many users were affected by an issue where Windows Update would lockup with the 100% CPU utilizaiton issue.  I also had difficulties at home in updating my oldest PC that used Windows 2000 SP4.  As I used it predominantly for work dial in purposes, I had not moved to XP to keep needed applications intact. 

As it is an older PC, I had tweeked most services so that they are started manually rather than automatically.  This included Windows Update where the Automatic Updates were turned off, (although I had always faithfully updated the system each "Patch Tuesday").

While the 100% update issue was not experienced on any of my XP based systems, the Windows 2000 system was affected.  A variety of things were tested in trying to fix this issue, including deleting all Windows Update web objects and technical settings.  Manually applying these updates (using IE's menu bar of TOOLS / WINDOWS UPDATE), still resulted in 100% CPU utilization.  A few updates were successful, but it locked up the PC environment, so that it could not be used until an update was completed (and this seemed to take much longer to accomplish as well).  

The better solution found was to TURN ON AUTOMATIC UPDATES and let updates stream across in a more transparent manner.  This allowed me to use the PC and get gradually updated throughout the day.  I'ved used this setting since probably February and it's working well so far.   

Windows Update - SVCHOST 100 Percent issue solved at home
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=windows+update+100+percent

Key Microsoft Windows Update Fix - December 2007
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/916089