Windows 10 Update

[John E]

Yesterday I was foolish enough to open Windows Update and asked it to check for updates (having previously done so about 3 weeks ago). I was amazed to find it "checking for updates" for near enough 4 hours!!

This update has now been on-going for over 9 hours

Oh dear... Win7 seems to be repeating the above. It spent 4 hours checking for updates yesterday and another 3 hours so far, this morning (and it still isn't finished). I hope this won't turn into a repeat of the disaster with Win10

[Edit...] Including yesterday, "checking for updates" has been ongoing now for 11 HOURS!!! I think it's gonna get turned off after today...

[2kaud]

I've had times when Windows 7 has taken 5 - 6 hours to do the checking. I've also once had it when it didn't finish in 24 hours! If you do an Internet Search there's plenty of info available about how to repair the Windows 7 update. The time taken seems to vary from one set of available updates to another. I wonder if Microsoft use different updates servers across the world and the time depends upon which you get connected?

For a first stab, try https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2714434

[John E]

Yeah, it's definitely a slow server or some kind of speed issue. I noticed that the space on my C:\ drive was hardly changing (it was only decreasing by about 200Kb every hour or so). But I then noticed that svshost.exe was consuming a huge amount of cpu usage. I then found this article with some suggested remedies. Solution #3 was to empty something called the Event Viewer Log (which I did and then re-booted).

Windows Update is still running - but my C:\ drive space is decreasing a lot quicker now (200Kb every minute or so).

Hopefully that's fixed it

[Arjay]

It might be helpful to understand some of the Windows fundamentals. Event Viewer is the viewer for the built-in logging repository in Windows. Applications can write to the event log to add info or error messages to the event log. At the end of the day, it is writing physical files to the hard drive, so eventually you can fill up the system drive. To prevent this, you can configure the event log to limit space used or use rolling logs, etc.. You can also write to the EventLog (or newer EventSource) in your own applications. Read up on it more by searching for EventLog or EventSource in msdn.

SvcHost.exe is simply a container that hosts Windows services that have been created as DLLs. With a windows service, you have two options for creation: 1) as an EXE; and 2) as a DLL.

If you create a Windows service as an EXE and register the service, the SCM (Service Control Manager) will simply execute your exe when you start the service (actually it will load up the exe as a process and then call well defined functions to start the service code within your exe). If your service is a dll, then when the service is started, the SCM will create an instance of the SvcHost.exe and load your dll into that instance. In some cases, multiple service dlls can be hosted within the same svchost.exe instance. To find out more about this, look into Windows Services in msdn.

In your case, svchost consuming a large amount of cpu doesn't tell you enough - what would be interesting is what service hosted by that svchost.exe was consuming the cpu. Task manager will tell you this (well newer Windows versions will tell you this).

[2kaud]

something called the Event Viewer Log

The event logs record various events that happen on the system.

Application log records events that are determined by the applications.

Security log records those security events that have been set-up by the Audit Policy for the computer (whether local or from a group policy)

The others log events as determined by the OS (eg shutdown, startup, service problems etc etc)

For each log, the maximum size of the log is specified and also what happens when the log is full - usually overwrite oldest events as needed.

[John E]

Thanks Arjay. The actual service being run was called netsvcs

[2kaud]

PS Further details of event logs, OS administration etc are covered in the Windows 7 Resource Kit (no Windows 10 resource kit??) and the Inside Out range of OS books etc.

For details of how the OS works under the surface, try Inside Windows set of books (the various editions relate to OS versions).

[John E]

I now think the event log issue was a red herring (what probably caused the speed increase was the re-boot).

Immediately after re-booting, the speed seems okay for about 10 minutes or so. But after that it slows down to a crawl. I might just keep re-booting every 10 minutes and see if the update eventually finishes (I'm assuming it's cumulative - i.e. re-booting won't lose the last lot of stuff that it just downloaded?)

There's 19Gb available on my drive so I'm pretty confident it's not a space issue.

[2kaud]

Have you tried the Windows Update Troubleshooter from my post #17? Its helped me in the past with similar issues.

Also, which Anti Virus have you installed? There have been issues previously with AVG and svchost.

[John E]

It's getting late here now but I'm planning to try the troubleshooter tomorrow. Regarding antivirus, I just use Microsoft Security Essentials. I've always found it to be pretty good.

[John E]

I installed the Windows Update Troubleshooter and ran it this morning. However, nothing much seems to have changed. It offers two tests. The first one is for the Windows Updater, which gives this result:-



and the second test is for the Background Intelligent Transfer Service, which gives this result:-



It doesn't matter how many times I run the troubleshooter, I see the same dialogs each time (and Windows Updater is still running constantly). I guess this should be telling me something - but I can't figure out what...

[2kaud]

should be telling me something

Houston, we have a problem!

I've mentioned this to a couple of the PC guys. They both say the same. Searching for Windows Updates in some cases can take up to 15 hours or longer! Their advice is to let the computer run and don't interrupt it. Don't reboot, don't shutdown etc and don't use it - just leave it on until its finished the searching. One said they've known it take 20 hours! Apparently there is now a hotfix for this issue (KB3172605?) which should fix it once installed!

[John E]

Apparently there is now a hotfix for this issue (KB3172605?) which should fix it once installed!

I hope so... "Checking for updates" has been ongoing today for just under 7 hours. And this is now the THIRD DAY!!!

When a feature thinks it's okay to hog my CPU for 3 whole days, that's surely just a subtle way of asking me to disable it??

FWIW I decided to try the same thing on a different Win7 machine. That one's now been checking for updates for about 4 hours!

Microsoft has lost the plot IMHO...

[John E]

I've mentioned this to a couple of the PC guys. They both say the same. Searching for Windows Updates in some cases can take up to 15 hours or longer!

Hi 2kaud - you should tell your colleagues about KB3172605. I managed to find this page on YouTube which explains how to install it. The YouTube page was all a bit blurred on my monitor but I just about managed to figure out what was going on. I applied the fix and boy, what a difference it's made.

I re-booted my machine and asked it to check for updates. This time, the check only lasted for about a minute or so - and it then installed 10 new updates. Another re-boot and bingo! The Update feature seems to be working normally again!

I'm just about to try it on my 2nd machine. Thanks to you and Arjay for all your help.

[2kaud]

Hi 2kaud - you should tell your colleagues about KB3172605.

They told me! That's how I know.

PS I've checked my computer and this was installed 14 Sept. It's only flagged as a recommended update though.