svchost.exe -k netsvcs

svchost.exe -k netsvcs is using 50% of the CPU all the time. Processes
Explorer shows it accessing the windows update service wuauserv and the
Cycles Delta, whatever that means, is showing around the 2,700,000,000 mark.

I've tried following the instructions on this page to automatically and
manually reset Windows Update,
https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/kb/971058, but it's still the same.

Any idea how to get Windows update working and svchost.exe not to use
50% CPU on Win7 64bit?

Dex wrote:
svchost.exe -k netsvcs is using 50% of the CPU all the time. Processes
Explorer shows it accessing the windows update service wuauserv and the
Cycles Delta, whatever that means, is showing around the 2,700,000,000
mark.

I've tried following the instructions on this page to automatically and
manually reset Windows Update,
https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/kb/971058, but it's still the same.

Any idea how to get Windows update working and svchost.exe not to use
50% CPU on Win7 64bit?

This is a well known problem.

I've seen it here, and WU can use 100% of a single CPU core
for at least a half hour, maybe longer.

http://superuser.com/questions/95804...mes-100-of-cpu

"The CPU usage comes from Windows Updates which tries to find Updates:

wuaueng.dll!CAgentUpdateManager::FindUpdates.

This method calls a function

wuaueng.dll!CUpdatesToPruneList::AddSupersedenceIn foIfNeeded

to see if all updates are needed or if they are replaced (superseded).
And this takes some time.

You can't avoid the CPU usage.

For a fresh Windows 7 install, use other tools that provide the current Updates.

http://download.wsusoffline.net/

That is certainly an option, but I'd sooner just run Windows Update
once every couple of months, for the convenience of having
an interface to work in, to select the updates.

There was one Windows Update patch, which solves *memory* usage by
the runaway process. But the runaway process problem itself
was not solved. Exactly how selective can you be when responding
to the complaints of IT people ? (One IT admin complained that
3000 computers at his work, were railed on one CPU core at the
same time.) So in the patch provided, Microsoft "bandaids" the
symptoms, by solving computers where all system memory is
consumed while all CPU is consumed. But once the memory usage
is reduced to 20% of the previous value, they don't bother
to stop the looping behavior.

It's just "idiotic computer science". Presumably intended to
irritate people and make them upgrade.

The *same* bug existed in WinXP as exists in Win7, with regard
to this problem. In later OSes, a cache is used to store
some of the Windows Update package examination activity,
but I'm not convinced this "Supersedence" won't show
up two years from now on Win8 or Win10.

*******

If you open an elevated command prompt ("Run as Administrator"
for cmd.exe), you can do

sc config wuauserv type= own

This will put wuauserv (running wuaueng file), in its own
service host. So there will be no other services running
inside the same host. This makes it easier to verify, in
Process Explorer, that you have nailed the culprit.

Or, as in the article in Superuser, you can do this

net stop wuauserv

to put it to sleep for a while. During the current
session.

Note that some Services (if you use the Service
control panel to look at them), the Service has
"retry capability". The service will start up to
three times, if you stop it. That's how the
Search Indexer is set up for example. So if you
find it running again, check services to see
if the "crash protection" has been set to cause
it to restart up to three times, in an effort
to keep the service alive. So even when you use
a purposeful "stop" of something, the OS may just
put this under the umbrella category of "crashed
service" and try and start it again.

Paul