Why Does Windows Update use all CPU power available?

[Ketchup]

I've been making some fresh VMs lately (mostly Windows 7), and that first update run after the SP1 install (which has been well documented here to take forever) just HAS to run the CPU at 100%.

Anybody know why?

The memory usage is a bit high, but it tops out around 2 GB. But CPU? It takes all it can get. And I don't see any reason for it, at all. Bump VM from 1 core to 2? Sure, it'll take all that too!

What in the world is it doing?

 

[MustISO]

Processing poorly written code I would guess. Windows updates never used to do this but sometime in the last year I've seen it eat CPU and as much RAM as the system had when doing a large number of updates (fresh install, etc)

 

[Elixer]

Are we sure it is a windows update that is causing this, and not the VM being throttled?
Which hypervisor are you using?

 

[Ketchup]

Did a fresh install on a laptop a couple weeks ago. Same thing, not limited to vm. VL and others have had threads that touched on this, but no one seems to know how or why.

 

[sm625]

The process that keeps track of windows update only uses one core. But when it finds updates and goes to install them, each KBxxxxxx installer will spawn multiple threads.

 

[Dahak]

Think part of it is, on a fresh install, it has to process whats there and not so that takes more time and process resources, and where as a install thats been around for years, has most of this processed and makes it easier to process

The really needed to do a SP2 or another cumulative roll up but its not likely to happen now

 

[Ketchup]

Think part of it is, on a fresh install, it has to process whats there and not so that takes more time and process resources, and where as a install thats been around for years, has most of this processed and makes it easier to process

The really needed to do a SP2 or another cumulative roll up but its not likely to happen now

Yes, there needs to be. Will there ever be? No. Loses the incentive to get Windows 10. And, TBH, all the installs for me lately were a bit on the odd side. If this was a regular thing, I would definitely just make more post-update images.

 

[Charlie98]

Yes, there needs to be. Will there ever be? No. Loses the incentive to get Windows 10. And, TBH, all the installs for me lately were a bit on the odd side. If this was a regular thing, I would definitely just make more post-update images.

After this last OS install, I remembered to make an image of it after I updated it and before I put the rest of my junk on it.

 

[VirtualLarry]

The memory usage is a bit high, but it tops out around 2 GB.

I've had it use 6.5GB of RAM. (Windows Update after a fresh install.)

 

[tidy]

.

 

[chin311]

I do lots of fresh installs of Win 7 SP1 (Pro, Home Premium mostly) and it takes ages to get the first pull of updates, I did some research and Microsoft has a patch that helped TREMENDOUSLY on every machine I've used it on, I'm talking from 30-60 minutes of "checking for updates" to like 5-10 minutes.

Check this thread: http://superuser.com/questions/951960/windows-7-sp1-windows-update-stuck-checking-for-updates

It has a link to the patch for 32bit and 64bit versions.