14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft rolled out this month’s Patch Tuesday updates a few hours ago, and everything seems to be running smoothly in the majority of cases, at least as far as installation of new bulletins is concerned.
It appears, however, that some users are experiencing a different type of problem that’s less common for a typical Patch Tuesday cycle.
Reports coming from users running Windows 7 reveal that Windows Update hangs when checking for updates or when downloading them, and the svchost.exe process CPU usage skyrockets to 100 percent.
Avoid checking for updates manually
At this point, it’s not yet clear why this is happening, but after trying the common workarounds, some users have decided to disable Windows Update and wait for a fix to be provided. Most likely, this is a server-side issue that’s going to be addressed soon, but for the moment, it blocks users from installing updates that would patch critical vulnerabilities in their software.
“Having same exact issue. Last month it took the most 10 minutes to show my updates. It has been 4 hours now and it is still ‘checking for updates.’ The service is running my CPU 50 %,” one user explained.
“The update check completed but now the downloading of the updates seems to be hanging. Green bar just keeps rolling along same as it did when checking for updates,” another one added.
We’ve also come across some similar reports of Windows Update hanging on Windows 10, but for the moment, this seems to be a rather isolated issue, so it remains more widespread on Windows 7.
The only solution in this case is to wait and avoid checking for updates manually, as Microsoft is expected to come up with a fix anytime soon. It remains to be seen if similar issues will be experienced today, but given the fact that many PCs have already received Patch Tuesday updates, the service should return to normal in the coming hours.