August 2015 Windows Update for Vista Requires One Hour to Run to Completion

Is Microsoft throttling bandwidth for users running Windows Update on Vista machines to give a higher priority to Win 10 users?

I've run multiple Windows Updates since Patch Tuesday on 11-Aug-2015 and couldn't get them to run to completion on my 32-bit Vista machine until 16-Aug-2015.  There were no errors - it just reported that it was checking for updates and never finished, even if I let it run for over an hour.  Process Explorer showed svchost.exe constantly consuming ~50% of my CPU (i.e., complete saturation of one of my Intel Duo cores) and that a thread for the Windows Update service (wuauserv) was responsible for all that CPU activity.

Is anyone from Microsoft looking into this issue where the initial Checking for updates... phase hangs for long periods of time during monthly Patch Tuesday updates for some Vista users?

Mooly01 provided a link to a post <here> by Windows Sysinternals forum administrator MagicAndre1981 stating that that Microsoft released a patch (KB3050265) for the Win 7 Update Client to fix a similar problem on some Win 7 machines. This Windows Update Client for Windows 7: June 2015 at https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3050265 reads in part:

"This update addresses an issue in which system performance can be decreased during scans. This issue has the greatest effect on computers that havea small amount of physical memory."

I've posted additional screenshots in ScousaJay's thread *windows update just seems to hang while checking* in the VistaForums which show that Checking for updates.... can run for more than an hour on my system during Patch Tuesday updates when Microsoft releases a large batch of updates.  Note that I have no problem running Windows Updates outside of Patch Tuesdays when zero or a small number of updates are found.  That VistaForums thread has over 15,000 views and several Vista users reporting the same issue so this is clearly not an isolated problem.

Here's the CPU consumption for my Feb 2016 Patch Tuesday updates that I ran on Wednesday, Feb 10th.  Checking for updates... was stuck for 80 min before reporting that 13 important updates were available for download.  The entire Windows Update session required 110 min to run from start to finish (the re-boot is displayed as a dark grey band at the far right of the image):

I'd like to know if Microsoft is planning to release a patch for the Windows Update Client for Vista that would address this problem, as they already did for Win 7 computers with limited amounts of RAM.

32-bit Vista Home Premium SP2 * Firefox 44.0.2 * IE9 * NIS 2014 v. 21.7.0.11

HP Pavilion dv6835ca, Intel Core2Duo T5550 @ 1.83 GHz, 3 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS

I have been looking around for some ideas/reasons for why I have also been having some odd problems with my Vista unit's updating tool.  And I keep pretty good records, so I am sure I can track down what month this started, when I have that kind of time, BUT that August of last year timestamp strikes me as really close to what my stupid built-in human memory system is 'telling" me.

So I am wondering if there might be some way to actually get facts from either Microsoft, or an outside expert?  I mean, actual information on code written into the updates, or AN update, that has caused this recent weirdness?  That would be NEW code, right?

Anybody get the idea where I am coming from?

Yes, I agree that most of us have better things to do with our time, but there is something about the direction the IT industry as a whole is heading and I am starting to think that maybe we need to start paying closer attention to what this industry is doing.  I better stop at that in my explanation for asking my questions.

So how about that code?  How can we see it?  I suppose if somebody can hand me the code I can check for any odd changes.  I can make some time for that, if somebody outside of Microsoft hasn't already done it.  I write "outside of Microsoft" because there better be at least one employee that knows where the code is stored and can read it, or we're all in heaps of trouble.

I have also encountered this problem every Patch Tuesday beginning August 2015 and including January 2016. My hunch is that Windows Update is scanning Vista SP2 systems in connection with the Windows 10 upgrade that Vista does not even qualify for. If that is the case, then Microsoft should kindly give Vista an update similar to this one that Windows 7 received in June 2015: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3050265#%2Fen-us%2Fkb%2F3050265

Another possibility is that Microsoft's servers are simply inadequate!

I encountered the 40 minutes  or so 'checking for updates' time butthis time around there was no problem with the processor locked up at 100% like there was before.

Vista is still a supported OS, and the fact MS seem to be 'penalising' users in this way really annoys me.

This sounds like one of those problems you need to be sat in front of unfortunately.

Unplugging the CPU (you mean you removed it from its socket ?) could have caused any number of issues. Faced with this I would need to prove the PC good by doing a quick and dirty clean install of either Vista/W7/W8.1 to confirm all hardware is OK.

If it is OK then restore back to a good disk image... please tell me you have full system images... they are a life saver for disasters like this.

Good luck, I hope you find a solution... Vista still rocks :)