Here is a problem that can leave your computer & you stressed out. About 30secs to 1 minute after booting into Windows the computer starts lagging heavily. When CTRL+ALT+DEL is pressed it shows that svchost.exe is using up maximum CPU resources and only occurs when Automatic Updates is enabled.
Microsoft has recognized this problem and has released a patch. However, for most of the computers, the Microsoft patches don’t fix the problem. This is a guide on how to fix this problem with svchost using maximum CPU.
First of all, to identify if you have this problem you need to press CTRL+ALT+DEL all at the same time, go to the “Processes Tab” and then press “Mem Usage”. If you have this svchost.exe memory leak bug after about 1 minute you will see that the amount of memory usage svchost.exe uses will keep increasing until CPU becomes 99 or 100%. Below is an example of what this looks like:
How to stop svchost.exe using up 100% system resources (Windows XP Only):
- Visit the Microsoft website and Download Windows Update v3 WindowsUpdateAgent30-x86 and save it to your C:\ drive
- Download this file fix_svchost.exe and save it to your C:\ drive
- Download this file WindowsXP-KB927891 and save it to your C:\ drive
- Reboot the computer and log in to Windows XP in safe mode. To do this, press F8 just before the Windows XP logo shows up during boot and press up to choose “Safe Mode”
- Once Windows has loaded and you have the option of which user account to use, log on as “Administrator”.
- Click Start > Run, choose the Browse button and find the fix_svchost file you saved before, press Open, then OK.
- A black screen will pop up and white text will scroll past. Wait for this process to finish as it could take several minutes. It will close itself when its finished.
- Once the black screen disappears, Click Start > Run, choose the Browse button and find the WindowsUpdateAgent30-x86 file you saved before, press Open, then OK. Follow the prompts as it installs.
- When Windows Update Agent finishes installing, Click Start > Run, choose the Browse button and find the WindowsXP-KB927891 file you saved before, press Open, then OK. Follow the prompts as it installs.
- Reboot the computer
