Subject: CCEX Alert: Microsoft Patch causes workstations to run exteemly slow or freeze.

Introduction

Microsoft recently released a patch that is causing a number computers to run extremely slow for prolonged periods of time.  This is caused by a Windows Update process running in the background that utilizes up to 100% of the CPU.  During this time the computer may appear to be unresponsive or frozen.

Affected Products

Windows 2000
Windows 2003
Windows XP
Windows Vista

What users can do to alleviate the problem

Many users have tried rebooting their computers to fix the issue.  While this often fixes a number of issues related to memory leaks and low system resources, in this case rebooting actually restarts the update process and the slowdown starts all over again.  Instead, when the computer appears to be frozen, wait 5 to 10 minutes for the update process to finish and the computer should become responsive again.

We are recommending that users affected by this issue manually update their computers by going to the following web site or clicking the “Windows Update” icon in your Start Menu.

http://update.microsoft.com/microsoftupdate

If after installing all pending critical updates, you find that you still have a problem, please contact us for a Microsoft support patch that should alleviate this issue.

For a more technical overview of this issue, please see the following link:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/916089/en-us

Have questions or need help?

As always, feel free to contact Capitol Computer at 301-731-4585 or request service at: http://www.ccex.com/contact/support.php

Thank you,

CCEX Staff

Alert by: Jeffrey Pena (Senior Network Engineer)