wuauclt.exe

[shane_c]

The last few weeks my computer has been running painfully slow at times. It seems to be making lots of noise as if it's doing something but gets hung up on something and it may take 5 minutes before Firefox will open up or sometimes when I try to close it it'll take at least a minute as it slowly closes from the top of the screen down. Other times I'll double click on an icon and everything will come to a grinding halt all the while the computer is making lots of 'computing' noises.

When I do clt-alt-del and look at the processes (it usually takes at least a minute or two for it to open) it seems that wuauclt.exe is churning away. I've done a bit of googling on it and some people say it's a virus and should be removed but others say it's a Microsoft update thing.

Thoughts?

[FlamesPuck12]

I don't think that's causing you any problems. I have the same process running as well and it seems to be the Windows Update process.

[sclitheroe]

It’s the Windows Auto Update client. You can change the settings for it in Control Panel, but in general, I’d just let it do its thing. Don’t turn off auto-updates if you aren’t disciplined enough to check for new critical updates on the second Tuesday of every month when MS releases their patches.

[shane_c]

So after running virus scans, spybot, adaware, defrags, etc with no change I installed and ran CCleaner. Now, for the most part, it is running very fast....... except....... once in a while everything grinds to a halt. It took me about 25 minutes to get Firefox started and get onto CP. When I check the processes that are running under task manager it had me at about 20% CPU usage but the memory usage for ccSvcHst and wuauclt.exe were increasing very quick.

[keratosis]

ccSvcHst seems to be related to Norton. try uninstalling that and
see what happens. If that fixes it try another anti virus like MSE.

[Akai-Sesui]

...just out of curiousity, you wouldn't be running an Acer Timeline laptop would you?
I know there was a pretty big problem with those having that exact issue of stalling up after less than an hour of operations.

[shane_c]

Originally Posted by keratosis

ccSvcHst seems to be related to Norton. try uninstalling that and
see what happens. If that fixes it try another anti virus like MSE.

I am running Norton but just recently started using it. The major slowdowns started happening before I installed it so I'm thinking that the wuauclt.exe is more of the issue.

[shane_c]

Originally Posted by Akai-Sesui

...just out of curiousity, you wouldn't be running an Acer Timeline laptop would you?
I know there was a pretty big problem with those having that exact issue of stalling up after less than an hour of operations.

No, it's a Dell, Pentium 4, 3.0 ghz, 512 mb RAM. It's about 6 years old now.

[Jordan!]

IT's some Windows Update process.

[DuffMan]

Couple of weeks ago at work, had a bunch of pc's that all of a sudden totally slowed down, mysteriously. Thought it was Communicator at first, and then Outlook. I think what it boiled down to, is any pc's with <512 mb RAm, have totally sucked ass lately. More ram and a defrag has helped a few, but most are just getting replaced. wuauclt, will only run for a couple of minutes, and shouldn't cause any problems, but then again, it is usually when people log on they complain, and that is when wuauclt runs here.

[Bobblehead]

It sounds like Norton's heuristics are kicking in when MS Autoupdate is starting up.

On of the thing Av manufactures do is try to detect when a program is doing some virus like behaviour. That way if it is a new type of virus they haven't developed a new definition to catch (or if a virus has self morphed) they can still catch it and protect you.

But that requires a but more processing power and especially on older computers can slow them down like what you are seeing.

On my parent's computer, older than yours, I saw exactly the same thing (with them it was a Rogers Internet AV suite). I removed it and replaced it with a lighter weight solution and the problem went away.

For the record, I used Panda Cloud AV. They don't go anyplace exotic, their computer is behind a NAT router, they have MS firewall turned on. It was a good solution for them.