Windows XP svchost.exe issues. Unable to find newest windows xp updates.

There are many threads on this forum - and many others - about this problem - just try doing a Google search for   XP SVCHOST UPDATES - now over 8 million hits.

But to save you the trouble of hunting down the correct fix here is the short version

1. Disable Automatic Updates via the Control Panel icon
2. Reboot the computer - SVCHOST will not now go mad
3. Check which version of Internet Explorer you have installed IE8, IE7 or IE6
4. Download and install - via links below - the correct update for Internet Explorer.

    Assuming you have Windows XP 32bit here are the direct download links:

IE8: IE8-WindowsXP-KB2898785-x86-ENU.exe

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=41404

IE7: IE7-WindowsXP-KB2898785-x86-ENU.exe

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=41442

IE6: WindowsXP-KB2898785-x86-ENU.exe

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=41458

5. Once installed you can re-enable Automatic Updates and use the Windows Update utility.

Note: The bug also affects access via the Windows/Microsoft Update website.   

KB2898785 is the "Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer" (10th December 2013)

There is a bug in the Automatic Update service on XP which runs the SVCHOST process at full CPU load (100% or 50% or 25% depending on how many CPU cores you have). If you have a Quad core CPU the bug runs the CPU at 25% (one core out of four) and eventually battles through to a conclusion - but if your computer is an old single core Celeron or Pentium the bug runs the CPU chip at 100% load for many, many hours solid.

The faster your processor chip and the more RAM you have seem to make a drastic difference to the actual times you may be waiting for the searching for updates to complete. Most old single core systems were never designed to cope with this type of situation and can easily overheat. This is especially true of laptops and older desktop systems where the heatsink may be partially clogged with fluff and pet hair - which might cause lockups or shutdowns!

Microsoft stated last month that the Internet Explorer updates are treated differently from all the other updates - which is causing the XP Update engine to run so slowly as to appear frozen. If the Update service detects you do not have the latest IE update that is currently available it starts to search the whole IE updates tree to see what you need - instead of just offering the current cumulative update for your system.

But if you manually install the update yourself the Update service finds Internet Explorer is fully updated and doesn't search for any IE updates. But until MS fix the issue it will keep happening each time a new update is released.

MS said they intended to prune the IE updates database so that only the key Cumulative updates were offered when a search was initiated - this didn't happen in time for the November updated as intended and obviously has not happened or worked in time for the December update either!

MS say they hope to have a fix before the January (Patch Tuesday) Updates are released - as the problem will activate again once the the next IE Cumulative Update is released.

Thank you, very much for responding.

I was able to resolve the issue, I switched over to another user account. Then reinitialized the automatic updates. I'm no longer receiving the 25% CPU usage, I had to disable automatic updates before switching over to the other user account. I then started the process over again. I'm running IE8, it downloaded all the lastest patches as of 12/9-10. Included the "Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer."

Thank you again, hopefully this will help others who are experiencing the same issue.