The title says it all. Since a few months, on every Windows 7 workstation I reinstall, the first check for updates takes several hours, during which there is no disk nor network activity but an svchost process is maxing out an entire CPU core and takes up about a GB of RAM.  Eventually once I let it run for several hours it finds the updates and starts installing them, so it's not an actual problem but still a big annoyance when I need to reinstall a machine for which I don't have an image ready.  Resetting Windows Update by stopping the services and deleting the SoftwareDistribution folder doesn't have any good effect and just makes the slow process restart from the beginning. Installing them manually via WSUSOffline still exhibits the same issue - it hangs for hours on "Listing IDs of installed updates" while svchost starts going crazy with CPU and RAM usage again.  There doesn't seem to be anything relevant in the event viewer - in the "Setup" category the last event is from "Servicing" saying that "KBWUClient-SelfUpdate-Aux" was successfully installed; there are no update-related errors of any kind. There is however a CAPI2 error saying "Failed extract of third-party root list from auto update cab at ... authrootstl.cab ... A required certificate is not within its validity period when verifying against the current system clock or the timestamp in the signed file", but I'm not sure whether it affects Windows Update. Needless to say, the system clock is correct.  This issue has been going on for months (including the CAPI error) and wastes hours of mine &amp; my clients' time.  Does anyone have a solution ?
2299
I installed Windows 7 fresh and installed SP1. Now, when I try to check manually for Windows Updates it just hangs on the Checking for updates screen.    I tried running the tools in , but this did not fix the issue either:  No matter what I do it just hangs on the "Checking for updates..." screen and goes no further.
111084
I am running Windows 8.1 x64 with all the latest updates from Microsoft. But still when I click on the GWX icon on the system tray it says "We are still evaluating your PC for the update".  People have already received the Windows 10 upgrade. Can anyone tell me why this is taking so long for me? Any suggestions would be helpful.
2353
I decided to upgrade to 17.10 on my Thinkpad.  Now every time I try to shut it down via console or menu) or reboot it, it takes ages.  TTY gives me several errors connected to hung_task_timeout_secs, reaching from kworker, over networkmanager down to wpa_supplicant.  I tried reinstalling with different ISOs (daily-build from 2 days ago, beta2, and the rc one from today) and still get the same error every time.  Any ideas what could cause that issue? Right now I'm running 17.10 on two other, different PCs without any problems whatsoever.  EDIT: deborphan doesn't return any orphaned packages. I think I might have found something though. I decided to completely wipe the disc, including my dualboot windows. Reinstalled, and everything worked fine. Today in university the problem reappeared.  Now the interesting part is: I think it is related to my wifi. At home, during installation and after, I had it plugged in via cable, and had no problems at all. But with only wifi in university it reappeared. So I gave it a try and plugged in the cable again at home, and it works again. Removed cable, restarted, and the problem reappears. Wifi-Card is a Qualcomm Atheros.
110060
I have a dual boot setup (Ubuntu-Linux and Windows-7 Pro 64-bit) on my laptop. I mostly do my work in Ubuntu, but every once in a while I have to use Windows. A few days ago, I booted into Windows after quite some time, and I checked for updates and there were a lot of new updates (more than 2GB!). To finish the update process I had to reboot and after that a lot of problems showed up!  I can't run many basic programs, such as IE and sidebar! The errors are missing DLLs, like the following screenshots:     I have compared my 'System32' folder with another healthy installation of Windows-7 (32-bit), and I confirm that there are several missing DLLs (like: api-ms-win-downlevel-advapi32-l1-1-0.dll, api-ms-win-downlevel-ole32-l1-1-0.dll, api-ms-win-downlevel-user32-l1-1-0.dll, api-ms-win-downlevel-shell32-l1-1-0.dll, ...). I haven't checked all the DLLs, so I don't know how many other DLLs are also missing.  I've been searching in the web for the past three days trying to figure out a solution. It seems that a lot of other people have faced the same problem, but unfortunately I didn't find any working solution. The most suggested solution was to run a System File Checker (SFC) scan (sfc /scannow), which I did and SFC reports that there are some corrupted system-files but it is unable to repair!  In a  I read that in this situation, one must try to manually repair the corrupted files based on the scan output log (CBS.log). When searching for how to do this, I found , which says that such a large amount of corrupt system-files can only be fixed using an "Inplace Upgrade" or "Repair Installation".  One concern is that my Windows-7 is an OEM-installation which came pre-installed with my laptop. I don't know that an "Inplace Upgrade" or "Repair Installation" will break my genuine Windows activation status or not?!   So, does anyone know about a solution to this problem? Either using a trusted tool, or guiding me to do the repair manually based on the SFC output log (CBS.log)? If not, can any one provide feedback on my concern about performing an "Inplace Upgrade" or "Repair Installation" on an OEM-installed Windows-7?
15013
I have had this happen to me twice now.  I'll be in the middle of working on something that has resulted in me not rebooting my machine for several days.  If Windows 7 is waiting to install updates it'll eventually get to a point where it forces a restart to install the updates.  The problem is that it doesn't notify me or tell me that its going to do this and I've lost work as a result and most recently had a VM become corrupt and unusable.  Is there a way to at least get it to prompt me before doing this?  It used to...
53282
I recently inherited the management of a Windows 2012 server at a remote site.    I checked Windows Update and it has not been updating since March.  When I tell Windows to check for updates, it acts like it is checking, but it seems to say that for hours.   If I attempt to restart the windows update service, it seems to never be able to shut down.  My only remedy seems to be rebooting to get back to the point where I can tell Windows Update to check for new updates.    The last successful check for updates says March 20.  The last time updates were installed says March 17 (failed).  The update history shows that one update failed for March 17, a printer driver update, but the history shows 13 failed updates for Feb 17.  Not sure what else to try.
54464
A friend has asked me to repair his Toshiba laptop after a virus crashed it. I've managed to do a clean re-install using the built in recovery partition, but the newly installed Windows is running absurdly slow. As in, it takes upwards of 30 minutes between logging in and the desktop actually showing, and once up doing anything has the same kind of wait periods. Booting up in safe mode seems to be working just fine, however.  I've done the re-install twice now and had the same problem both times. I've also noticed that the Toshiba install comes with a huge amount of bloatware and I'm worried that this is contributing to the issue. Even if its not, it definitely isn't helping things. Since I have his product key and a compatible Windows 7 install disc I've been debating whether to just use that instead.  My question is: is there any potential issue using a standard install disc instead of the built-in OEM version? I realize that I'd have to go find all of the drivers and manually install them this way, but that'd be a small price to pay if it actually works. And I wouldn't have to spend time going through and removing all the useless apps the OEM version adds in. So other than missing drivers, what problems could I run into?  (EDIT) I have used a linux live cd to check the hard disk and it is doing fine. I've tried removing some of the bloat while in safe mode, but half of the apps are could not be uninstalled due to errors/missing uninstaller/whatever. Starting up with a clean boot did not show any real difference in performance.
23343
If a Windows server (2k3/2k8) is set to "download but not install" updates, is there a way to check from the command line.. perhaps a log file or something I can check with powershell, to see if there are any updates actually waiting to be installed? I'm trying to prevent having to manually log on to each server to check, even though they want the "trigger" pulled manually. We have an automation system in place I can use (CA Autosys) - just not sure what to have it look for.
6611
Since installing the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, I have a svchost.exe process that is constantly using about 14​ % of CPU time:    This svchost.exe instance is responsible for hosting three services:    The CPU time is consumed by a thread inside that process that  cannot attribute to any of these three services:    Given that these three services are considered critical system services, it's hard to do anything about them. These services cannot be stopped or disabled by services.msc, and terminating the process triggers a bugcheck (CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED). Disabling the Windows Defender Firewall through the settings UI does not reduce CPU usage.  I'm out of ideas. What could be causing this? How can I debug this further? Is there a workaround to stop these services?    Update: After some debugging with , we've isolated this to the Windows Defender Firewall service. Process Monitor shows that it's constantly accessing the registry:    A CSV export of a Process Monitor capture, filtered to that process, is available .  I’m still looking for a way to stop that behavior.    Update 2: Analysis with the Windows Performance Analyzer shows that most CPU time is consumed by code from rpcrt4.dll:
119371
I have a core i3 notebook running Windows 7 32-bit, and sometimes it takes a long time to shutdown or reboot.  I have disabled Windows Update, and have not installed any new software or drivers.  So, there is no reason to take about 5 minutes to shutdown or reboot.  How can I determine what it is doing? BTW, I see the blinking light for hard disk activity during these time.
63666
We are getting very slow compile times, which can take upwards of 20+ minutes on dual core   2GHz, 2G Ram machines.  A lot of this is due to the size of our solution which has grown to 70+ projects, as well as VSS which is a bottle neck in itself when you have a lot of files. (swapping out VSS is not an option unfortunately, so I don't want this to descend into a VSS bash)  We are looking at merging projects.  We are also looking at having multiple solutions to achieve greater separation of concerns and quicker compile times for each element of the application. This I can see will become a DLL hell as we try to keep things in synch.  I am interested to know how other teams have dealt with this scaling issue, what do you do when your code base reaches a critical mass that you are wasting half the day watching the status bar deliver compile messages.  UPDATE I neglected to mention this is a C# solution. Thanks for all the C++ suggestions, but it's been a few years since I've had to worry about headers.  EDIT:  Nice suggestions that have helped so far (not saying there aren't other nice suggestions below, just what has helped)   New 3GHz laptop - the power of lost utilization works wonders when whinging to management Disable Anti Virus during compile 'Disconnecting' from VSS (actually the network) during compile - I may get us to remove VS-VSS integration altogether and stick to using the VSS UI   Still not rip-snorting through a compile, but every bit helps.  Orion did mention in a comment that generics may have a play also. From my tests there does appear to be a minimal performance hit, but not high enough to sure - compile times can be inconsistent due to disc activity. Due to time limitations, my tests didn't include as many Generics, or as much code, as would appear in live system, so that may accumulate. I wouldn't avoid using generics where they are supposed to be used, just for compile time performance  WORKAROUND  We are testing the practice of building new areas of the application in new solutions, importing in the latest dlls as required, them integrating them into the larger solution when we are happy with them.  We may also do them same to existing code by creating temporary solutions that just encapsulate the areas we need to work on, and throwing them away after reintegrating the code. We need to weigh up the time it will take to reintegrate this code against the time we gain by not having Rip Van Winkle like experiences with rapid recompiling during development.
9953
I'm having a problem with Windows 7 64-bit. I thought it was slow and all, but then I saw that the CPU usage was always around 80% and started searching for a solution.  There are two svchost.exe's consuming around 30% each and in the resources monitor there's a system interrupts consuming 45% all the time. I tried closing the applications, but it makes no difference.  I tried some other things that I've found on Google, like disable system updates, but it didn't work.  I don't know if it will help but here's my specifications:  Core 2 Duo 4400 ATI Radeon 4850 4 GB DDR2 RAM     EDIT  I ran the suggested program and got this information; did I get it right?      EDIT  As you asked here it is, did I get it right now? The other TCP/IP there's nothing.    EDIT  I ran msconfig and took the services that one of the svchost.exe processes was using out of the startup and now my CPU is around 50%, but I still would like to improve it further. I can't lose that much CPU power just because of Windows...    EDIT  Yeah, there's nothing I can do here. I am going to reinstall Windows&nbsp;XP soon, it's really weird...
88721
In the last 18 hours my Windows 7 Pro 64-bit machine has rebooted in response to the Windows Update applying patches.  Now I find when I try to start the VirtualBox Manager (not the actual VM's which the manager manages, I don't get that far) I get the message "\.\GLOBALROOT\SystemRoot\System32.dll is either not designed to run on Windows or it contains an error"    When I search for this file at %systemroot%\System32\crypy32.dll it doesn't exist.  It seems that the patching has wiped this file out ?  I have followed the advice from the dialog box of re-installing VirtualBox (both the version I was originally running and several later versions) but none of that helps (well actually I get different errors from the later versions but I would rather address this issue than wade into a other VirtualBox errors).  How can I most easily get a relevant copy of crypt32.dll ? I only have a recovery partition not the "original installation media".    EDIT: Good advice from @Bob. Unfortunately, it seems, I've used up all my System Restore points in trying to fix this earlier. I've put up another question asking what options I have :  .    EDIT: Here are the updates most recently applied to the machine in question:
39693
my former wrong assumption: it drains my notebook battery and I've no shortage of RAM. In Task manager you see ntoskrnl.exe is eating more CPU time than any other process. this feature does not appear to be optional and came 2 days ago with the 1st Win10 Update (Win10Pro in my case).  Edit:  I want to disable it, at least to exclude it as a culprit for my (unproven) assumptions. That process never came to my attention in the last 2 months and in task manager's long name it's called "system memory and compressed memory".
121897
I'm looking for Windows 7 software that will allow me to quickly create a "checkpoint", do whatever I might need to do to my computer - install programs/drivers/updates, create/delete personal files, reboot the system multiple times, open questionable attachments - and then revert the entire system back to when the checkpoint was created.  Essentially I want Windows Restore Points that save my personal files and partitions, too.  It sounds like disk imaging might be the ticket, but creating them is much too slow and the restore process too involved... I'm hoping to sacrifice full disaster recovery for speed. Creating a checkpoint should be as close to one-click as possible, and rolling back should be a matter of selecting a restore point and rebooting. Ding!  I'm familiar with Sandboxie, True Image Home "Try and Decide", Returnil, and a number of other "virtual system" apps that actively "catch" changes and allow you to commit or reject them. I'm not interested in these for a number of reasons - I prefer the "cut and dry" restore point approach.  Finally, I'll note that I've just recently become aware of . It sounds absolutely perfect, however, a quick skim through the user forums show more than a few horror stories of corrupted, unbootable systems. Any positive personal experience with the software to suppress my superstitions, or suggestions for more established alternatives would be greatly appreciated - Comodo Time Machine seems relatively new. I'm willing to purchase unbloated, quality software.  Thanks for your help!
96878
I am trying to upgrade my Win7 system to Windows 10 (because I am, apparently, masochistic). It's not working, locking up at about 30 to 35%, requiring me to reset, which then backs out the upgrade.  The whole process takes about three to four hours. A large part of this is having to download 3.5GB of upgrade every time, because Microsoft's tool doesn't cache the install files.  The tool has an option to create a bootable USB stick, which I can use to do an install. This should be way faster.  However, Microsoft seem really firm that if I want to get my free upgrade, I need to pick to 'Upgrade this PC' option from the upgrade tool. This seems peculiar. Can anyone confirm (i.e. who actually knows from first hand knowledge) whether upgrading from a USB stick actually works?
26336
As a small software development company, we run a few Windows production webservers and manually install Microsoft updates and security patches. Most of the time, a restart is required.   After the updates are installed and the server asks for a restart, is the server during the time between this message and the restart somehow more vulnerable, or is it perfectly in order to delay the restart (and the security level remains the same as before)?