Windows Update Client...hogs resources of even damn fast machines...
Windows Update Client gives problems if you shut down the machine whilst it is downloading the updates. So, I change the settings for the updater to download and notify me of the updates and not to install them. The issue here being that for some reason, the update client keeps trying to download something that has already been downloaded. Remember that this happens when you shut down the system when the updater is downloading something in the background. Like that was not enough, it hogs the system resources so much that even a regular copy operations takes ages. Obvious course of action was to kill the update client process...but NO...it wont allow me to kill the process either. Access Denied...even for admin.
Turns out my roomie also encountered this same issue a while ago...and he ended up formatting his system. That time I blamed it on his system being slow....but it was not to be the same case for me.
Well...Norton Ghost to the rescue. Made an intial back up of my system..when I first installed it....and it came to about 20G...ya ya...it is almost all the software a developer would ever need...well..most of it atleast. Using my breaks from TV to backup my MyDocuments and my favorites, (which literally took 5-6hrs on a machine with 1.5G RAM)... I tried for the first time ever to load my backup image from Norton Ghost 9.0....and wolla....15 mins....my machine was back up and running. Well...turned off the automatic updates this time....and everything seems to be working like a charm again.
Moral of the story:
Allowing Windows to automatically manage updates.....3-4hrs of torture.
Trying to back up while the update client is running in the background.....5hrs.
Using Norton Ghost to restore your system in 15mins....PRICELESS.
I worked on the Updater Block before ... and by the looks of the symptoms, it sure looks like a polished implementation of the UAB. Looking forward to it being implemented properly with ClickOnce.