Tuesday, December 17, 2013
Svchost is in the hart of XP patch misery
There's a built-in process, svchost.exe, chewing up the entire processor, sometimes for an hour or more at a time. Wait long enough
after booting and the machine will eventually return to normalcy. But an
hour can be a long time to wait.
Unfortunately, the Windows Update client components used an algorithm with exponential scaling when processing these lists. Each additional superseded patch would double the time taken to process the list. With the operating system now very old, those lists have grown long, sometimes to 40 or more items. On a new machine, that processing appeared to be almost instantaneous. It is now very slow.
___________________________
99% BAD HARDWARE WEEK: Immediate problem fix ? Don't boot !
Unfortunately, the Windows Update client components used an algorithm with exponential scaling when processing these lists. Each additional superseded patch would double the time taken to process the list. With the operating system now very old, those lists have grown long, sometimes to 40 or more items. On a new machine, that processing appeared to be almost instantaneous. It is now very slow.
___________________________
99% BAD HARDWARE WEEK: Immediate problem fix ? Don't boot !