Submission + - Microsoft Update Memory Leak
mksolid writes: "I'm a computer technician for a small IT company and I have been driven absolutely crazy since Friday with a problem that occurred when I would boot up any Windows XP desktop machines. When I opened Task Manager to monitor the resource usage, I noticed that the 'svchost.exe' process (run by the SYSTEM account) would take up 99% CPU time and cause a massive memory leak for the first 5-10 minutes after logging into a user account. I did virus scans, anti-spyware scans and anything that I could to ensure that the problem wasn't related to malicious software, and I even setup a clean test system and still had the same problems. I finally decided to use TDIMonitor and check the network for the culprit resource hog, and I discovered that the system was repeatedly sending out requests for various Microsoft files. I simply disabled Microsoft Update from the Windows Update page and the problem has gone away. Our machines now startup and operate very smoothly within seconds. I suppose the discovery is that there is a bug in Microsoft Update that causes a massive memory leak and it needs further investigation by Microsoft."
