What in God's name is my computer doing?

[flat spot]

I still use my old computer running Vista for surfing but every single time I switch it on (once a day) it starts p1ss1ng about what appears to be updating. HDD chunnering away for the best part of 10 mins until it stops and normal service resumes. I've looked in the task manager but nothing seems to be doing anything. I've also uninstalled loads of old programs from gathered over the years and still the same.

How can I tell definitively what it's playing at?

[RhynoCZ]

Do you run Service Pack 2?

Mining bitcoins perhaps?

Defragmentation of the HDD?

ccleaner (to fix registry)

Have you checked the ''startup'' apps (can be checked and removed in the ccleaner program).

EDIT: By the way, there was a feck up, at Microsoft, with the Microsoft update center. I'm running win7 and I had to instal quite a lot of stuff myself, so I could actually get some updates. The feck up was simple, the OS was trying to obtain updates, but always failed and kept trying over and over again, randomly slowing down the OS, draining HW resources. Maybe you're experiencing the same issue.

Vista should be supported at least till 11.4.2017 (The MS rule of the 10 years lifespan of their operating systems)

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IF all above fails, then try a linux based OS. So far, I tried Ubuntu (user friendly), Debian (stability at all costs), Fedora (mix of both of those version).
Ubuntu - 5/10 - easy install and initial setup (didn't like it, though)
Debian - 7/10 - sometimes requires a serious ''linux skill'' to make things work (I had trouble to get my GFX card going = fixed by the Linux guru, Teme himself)
Fedora - 9/10 - My all time favourite version, user friendly. I did a clean instal on q6600, 8GB DDR2 and ATi HD6790 (then used a HD4850 instead), everything worked, without hassle. Fedora didn't even care I swapped the GFX cards.
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All 3 version are alright for browsing the internet, office work (word, excel, email...) and even for some torrenting, music and video content. Games? Sure = emulation of dosbox and every single gaming console there ever was. Plus some opengl games, of course.
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'87 Honda XBR 500, '96 Kawasaki ZX7R P1, '90 Honda CB-1, '88 Kawasaki GPz550, MZ 150 ETZ
'95 Mercedes-Benz w202 C200 CGI, '98 Mercedes-Benz w210 E200 Kompressor

[lihp]

Should have bought a mac.
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covent.gardens: lihp is my most favourite member ever

[stinkwheel]

You have a version of windows MS no longer want to support so they are deliberately fucking it up for you to make you move onto windows 10.

The exact same reason the screwup with the windows 7 update engine Rhyo described above happened (which I can verify has happened to all four windows 7 machines at my work, I've just stopped them looking for updates now).

Same reason our two remaining XP machines take up to 15 minutes from start up to being in a position to do any useful work despite the only thing they ever do is access a database via a remote connection. The same thing they've been doing since they were bought, just now taking three times as long to achieve.

[/CYNIC]
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“Rule one: Always stick around for one more drink. That's when things happen. That's when you find out everything you want to know.”
I did the 2010 Round Britain Rally on my 350 Bullet. 89 landmarks, 3 months, 9,500 miles.

[barrkel]

Windows Update has an update problem alright.

Technically the problem that Update is trying to solve is very complex - it's in a class of problems that we know is very hard: it's NP-complete.

I don't know that Windows 7's Update problem is actually hard enough to enter NP-complete territory, but I do know that it regularly ties itself in knots, and if you poke at wuauserv's svchost.exe threads you can see it close to repeating the same operation over and over again. It looks to be iterating over a list as part of that search too, which is never a good sign.

I used to run a script that looped performing 'net stop wuauserv' every few seconds in an admin console window, just to keep it quiet.

I've since moved on to Windows 10. When combined with Classic Shell and all the privacy crap has been tweaked, it's almost the same as 7.
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Bikes: S1000R, SH350; Exes: Vity 125, PS125, YBR125, ER6f, VFR800, Brutale 920, CB600F, SH300x4
Best road ever ridden: www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2MhNxUEYtQ

[M.C]

Maybe I'm missing the problem, but just set the updates to manual? I do that anyway, and I don't believe you can fully do that with Win10.

[stinkwheel]

Meanwhile at microsoft HQ...

https://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f216/stinkwheel/809c0469-the-work-of-a-programmer.gif
____________________
“Rule one: Always stick around for one more drink. That's when things happen. That's when you find out everything you want to know.”
I did the 2010 Round Britain Rally on my 350 Bullet. 89 landmarks, 3 months, 9,500 miles.

[RhynoCZ]

[Seb]

Amazes me that MS haven't been hammered in court over it tbh.

It's an issue that's been around for 10 years, MS won't allow you to download the fix for it separately for Vista (that's barely a fix, it just means it takes 20 minutes instead of 2 days to a week). Granted it's a a pretty easy argument to add that there's really no reason to stick with Vista vs 7,8 or 10 but you can guarantee that Windows 7 will get struck down with exactly the same bug and behaviour the moment it goes EOL.

As stated, disable windows update entirely and the problem goes away.

If you've got a fresh machine that you want to update, look into WSUSOffline.

The same will apply to Windows 7.
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2010 Triumph 1050 Sprint ST

[CaNsA]

[noobRider]

[Rogerborg]

+1 for Mint. No tablet-tard ideology here, no dicking around with configurations. By default it looks and acts much like a proper version of Windows, i.e. it gets out of your way.

If you're just browsing and such, it's absolutely fine. Mrs Borg runs it, so even a woman can use it.
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Biking is 1/20th as dangerous as horse riding.
GONE: HN125-8, LF-250B, GPz 305, GPZ 500S, Burgman 400 // RIDING: F650GS (800 twin), Royal Enfield Bullet Electra 500 AVL, Ninja 250R because racebike

[RhynoCZ]

Time for me to try Mint, then.

The only reason I use Windows is the DirectX. The rest of my daily tasks can be done with no extra effort in Linux.
____________________
'87 Honda XBR 500, '96 Kawasaki ZX7R P1, '90 Honda CB-1, '88 Kawasaki GPz550, MZ 150 ETZ
'95 Mercedes-Benz w202 C200 CGI, '98 Mercedes-Benz w210 E200 Kompressor

[stinkwheel]

Mrs stinkwheel also uses mint with no problems.

I use Mint Debian, rolling release goodness, no upgrades.

I'm using the mate GUI on both because it's clean and non-intrusive. Cinnamon is shinier/funkier but I don't think it adds anything to the user experience.

Mrs stinkwheels laptop takes a minute from pressing the on switch to having her homepage up on a browser.
____________________
“Rule one: Always stick around for one more drink. That's when things happen. That's when you find out everything you want to know.”
I did the 2010 Round Britain Rally on my 350 Bullet. 89 landmarks, 3 months, 9,500 miles.

[flat spot]

[kgm]

I gave up on windows 7 due to update issues bit I prefer Linux anyway. Win 10 isnt too bad if windows is essential. Mint is a decent option. I like arch but definitely not the best for new Linux users. Glad to see so many Linux users on the forum.

[Mawsley]

[RhynoCZ]

[flat spot]

Right well turning off windows updates hasn't done anything. The HDD is chunnering away as we speak.

[Seb]

You can confirm if it's the windows update bug by looking in task manager at the CPU load, one of your services will be locked rock solid at 50% cpu or higher the entire time if so.

Right click on the start menu > Computer management > System and services > right click wuauserv > properties > Set it to disabled. Reboot afterwards to be sure.

What Anti Virus do you use? Most will leave Windows Defender enabled which on Vista is a complete waste of time. By default it does a daily scan during the day time and is a substantial resource hog. Look in the control panel for Windows Defender there and check if it's scheduled to scan.

Vista also likes to defrag routinely, but that is generally only done when the screensaver is active.
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2010 Triumph 1050 Sprint ST

[WD Forte]

Fister eh?
Hmmm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IfnjBHtjHc
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bikers smell of wee

[flat spot]

[M.C]

Not really a solution but something that might be worth a try: https://www.avg.com/gb-en/avg-pctuneup I recently tried the trial version on my laptop, and apart from cleaning up the registry (which was why I downloaded it) it blocks a lot of running processes. If it wasn't a yearly subscription thing I'd have actually purchased it.

[Seb]

[lihp]

This can still be fixed by buying a Mac
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covent.gardens: lihp is my most favourite member ever