100% CPU Usage caused by Microsoft Update

[NIM]

The issue

The Automatic Updates service uses 100% CPU when it checks for updates when Microsoft Update is enabled.

The reasons

What triggers that behaviour is actually unknown. I think that it's related to the SFC being disabled.

The symptoms

Enormous slow-down when using the computer: applications take ages to load. This happens often even a few minutes after windows has booted. When you open the task manager you can see svchost.exe using 100% cpu.

When it doesn't happen

It doesn't happen to users using dual-core or dual-cpu machines because only 100% cpu of one core is used.

The Solution

There are various solutions on the web however they're just temporary fixes: the problem always comes back after a while.

Fortunately MS released a KB: you'll find the download link inside this post.

The Microsoft KB Article

For the patch look below, you can't obtain it from MS website

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/914810

The patch

WindowsXP_KB914810_v2_x86_ENU.zip

Please check it out with an antivirus before installing I take no responsabilities for that file: I scanned it with Kaspersky 6 and it didn't detect anything harmful however better be safe than sorry.

P.S. if somebody here can send me that patch for other languages (they must be requested to MS support) i'll include them in this post too.