svchost.exe 0x745f2780 automatic updates

So, I guess I'll start a new thread, just to see if anyone out there has
learned anything new. My Microsoft support contact said to add svchost.exe
to the DEP exclusion list, but that didn't prevent the problem from
happening again the next time pending updates were available. I've read
people setting up brand new (Dell) computers even without any AV/firewall
software are getting this with pending Automatic Updates, but on the other
hand it is only happening to a tiny percentage of us and then only a
fraction of our installed computers (which for my computers are cloned from
the same image thus *should* behave the same, but are not) which is what
apparently is making it impossible to narrow down to a cause.

Application popup: svchost.exe - Application Error : The instruction at
"0x745f2780" referenced memory at "0x00000000". The memory could not be
"read".

The gist is that the Automatic Updates service is fouled up and non-
responsive sometime shortly after Windows XP boots, when there are pending
updates available to be installed.

Manually installing the updates *usually* clears this, but I've had a
couple of computers where even that didn't help (I didn't have hours to
waste having them not usable, so I had to re-image them after the first
hour of trying everything I could think of to do didn't clear things up.)

By the way, do *not* close those error dialogs, otherwise the computer will
become completely unresponsive and you'll have to resort to a hard reboot.
By leaving the error boxes up, you can usually disable the Automatic
Updates service, reboot, manually install the patches, and then re-enable
AU. Most of the time the computer is then ok.

Not much use to people with hundreds of computers to support with dozens
having this problem, though - defeats the purpose of "automatic" updating.

Not much help, and small sample, but that one bit me on one machine, an 18-mo
old Dell 8400 Presc[h]ott 3.2, XP Pro SP2, a well-used and otherwise solid
machine in daily use.

I'm not sure of the instruction address, but SVChost definitely tried to touch
0h, and I definitely had to use the power switch (didn't think to kill the
WU-process. A manual update and a couple of reboots cleared things for now.
Let us pray.

"CogX" <spam-> wrote in message
news:Xns98596A0FEA627anonawbxcydzaaaa0000@207.46.2 48.16
....
> The gist is that the Automatic Updates service is fouled up and non-
> responsive sometime shortly after Windows XP boots, when there are pending
> updates available to be installed.


In that case you should try disabling AU autodetection.
E.g. turn off Automatic Updates using AU settings dialog
but leave the AU service running. Then you should be able to
use WU or MU instead to get the updates done.
Or perhaps it is just a timing thing during the boot and you
would be able to use AU autodetection later. Etc.


> Manually installing the updates *usually* clears this,


Be more specific? How manually?


> By the way, do *not* close those error dialogs, otherwise the computer will
> become completely unresponsive and you'll have to resort to a hard reboot.
> By leaving the error boxes up, you can usually disable the Automatic
> Updates service, reboot, manually install the patches, and then re-enable
> AU. Most of the time the computer is then ok.


That doesn't make much sense unless it means that you are preventing
a recovery procedure from the failing task which has even worse problems
in it than the original task, in which case just preventing the autodetection
again could help. Have you tried stopping the service before responding
to the Error Reporting dialog? Oh. Does the whole svchost.exe task
then go down? E.g. no recovery at all? That would take down all the
other services it hosts which unfortunately is a lot of the OS functionality.
In that case it might be worthwhile looking at an experiment I have thought
of trying for a long time: give wuauserv its own svchost.exe task.


> Not much use to people with hundreds of computers to support with dozens
> having this problem, though - defeats the purpose of "automatic" updating.


Maybe this is MS way to try to get you to try SMS? <EG>


BTW has anybody looked at this from the perspective of concurrency?
E.g. are the machines it happens on mostly MP's?


HTH

Robert Aldwinckle
---

Here's your fix...you'll need to contact microsoft to get the patch...

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/916089

"Robert Aldwinckle" wrote:

> "CogX" <spam-> wrote in message
> news:Xns98596A0FEA627anonawbxcydzaaaa0000@207.46.2 48.16
> ....
> > The gist is that the Automatic Updates service is fouled up and non-
> > responsive sometime shortly after Windows XP boots, when there are pending
> > updates available to be installed.
>
>
> In that case you should try disabling AU autodetection.
> E.g. turn off Automatic Updates using AU settings dialog
> but leave the AU service running. Then you should be able to
> use WU or MU instead to get the updates done.
> Or perhaps it is just a timing thing during the boot and you
> would be able to use AU autodetection later. Etc.
>
>
> > Manually installing the updates *usually* clears this,
>
>
> Be more specific? How manually?
>
>
> > By the way, do *not* close those error dialogs, otherwise the computer will
> > become completely unresponsive and you'll have to resort to a hard reboot.
> > By leaving the error boxes up, you can usually disable the Automatic
> > Updates service, reboot, manually install the patches, and then re-enable
> > AU. Most of the time the computer is then ok.
>
>
> That doesn't make much sense unless it means that you are preventing
> a recovery procedure from the failing task which has even worse problems
> in it than the original task, in which case just preventing the autodetection
> again could help. Have you tried stopping the service before responding
> to the Error Reporting dialog? Oh. Does the whole svchost.exe task
> then go down? E.g. no recovery at all? That would take down all the
> other services it hosts which unfortunately is a lot of the OS functionality.
> In that case it might be worthwhile looking at an experiment I have thought
> of trying for a long time: give wuauserv its own svchost.exe task.
>
>
> > Not much use to people with hundreds of computers to support with dozens
> > having this problem, though - defeats the purpose of "automatic" updating.
>
>
> Maybe this is MS way to try to get you to try SMS? <EG>
>
>
> BTW has anybody looked at this from the perspective of concurrency?
> E.g. are the machines it happens on mostly MP's?
>
>
> HTH
>
> Robert Aldwinckle
> ---
>
>
>