[SOLVED] Windows 7 x64 stuck updating - high cpu usage svchost - wuaueng.dll

[dualopsys]

I have a family members windows 7 x64 tower that is showing that the last time it performed an update check was Sept 12, 2016 (about 2 weeks ago)
and the last time updates were installed was on Sept 8, 2016

Currently, I am also seeing a consistent high CPU usage of approximately ~50% for a SVCHOST. The threads of the Svchost showing wauueng.dll consuming ~49% of the thread activity.

When I try to manually update windows via <control panel> <Updates> <windows update>, the initial screen shows "windows 10 upgrade reserved".

After selecting <check for updates>, the update screen shows "checking for updates" with the scrolling green bar.

I have left the computer running for several hours and the check for updates never completes.
The CPU usage of the existing SVCHOST remains at approximately 50%.

Restarting the computer does not clear the problem.

Any ideas where to start looking.

 

[dualopsys]

update: I did run SFCFIX and the software reported ZERO errors found:

SFCFix version 3.0.0.0 by niemiro.
Start time: 2016-10-03 18:51:06.011
Microsoft Windows 7 Service Pack 1 - amd64
Not using a script file.


AutoAnalysis::
SUMMARY: No corruptions were detected.
AutoAnalysis:: directive completed successfully.


Successfully processed all directives.
SFCFix version 3.0.0.0 by niemiro has completed.
Currently storing 0 datablocks.
Finish time: 2016-10-03 19:19:26.292


I have attached the CBS text file as a ZIP; however, the entire CBS folder would not upload to the forum... there were many CAB files in the folder and I suspect the forum detected those CAB files and disallowed the upload of the ZIPPED folder

 

[Willy2]

- Since the SFCfix tool didn't report any corrupted files, I would try this guide:

Solve Windows Update problem (High CPU & memory usage)

 

[dualopsys]

there are a couple of notes about the referenced process.

first, when I ran svchost lookup tool from tweaking, it did not initially show a significant amount of memory usage... in fact I ran it a couple of times and it showed about 90MB in use.

I then reset the computer, selected check for windows updates and re-ran svchost lookup. For a short period of time, the tool reported approximately 150MB of memory usage. After 3 refreshes of the tool over the course of about 3 minutes, the tool reported that memory consumption of the window update process dropped back to about 90MB of memory consumption.

So I proceeded on with the process.

Since this was NOT a fresh install of windows 7, I proceeded to step 5.

There is a problem with the referenced command to list all updates on the computer.

the command: systeminfo > "C:\test\info-list.txt"
does NOT create a complete list of installed updates. I very briefly searched and found a reference indicating Microsoft knows this is a bug in the windows 7 platform.

so instead of using the systeminfo command, you might want to consider substituting the following:

md c:\test
wmic qfe list brief /format:table > "c:\test\info-list.txt"


once I had a complete list of all the installed updates, I checked through the list of suggested installed updates at Search for Windows Updates takes forever? - A possible solution

What I found was that all were installed EXCEPT for KB3189511.

Based on the KB article from Microsoft, it appears this KB was released the day AFTER this computer was able to complete it's last automatic update.

After install of KB3189511, automatic updates now appear to be functioning O.K.

thanks for the reference.

please consider making a change to the command to collect the list of installed updates.