svchost causing 100% cpu and freezing xp

[Paranoid Delusion]

Like a lot of people, a friend has been using M$ update instead of the normal Windows update.

For approx the last six months his pc has had intermitant freezes\crashes which a reboot has solved only for a relatively short period of time, but as he is a "low user" never complained to me until yesterday.

On testing found his cpu was running at 100%, which started after a few minutes, this was traced to svchost trying to initiliase Microsoft updates (including office 2003) over the internet.

After a bit of googling found this topic,

http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/...m/786004271831

if you like a never finding a complete answer, read it all.

If you just want the fix, look on page 7 and choose your flavour of xp.

Always nice to see M$ being so thorough, even if it does take them 6 months and not even a release onto there automatic updates, where the problem started in the first place.

As per the Thread, this apparently does not affect Windows update, only Microsoft update.