OK I know extensively about this sucker (original post, not tangent;). svchost controls all of Windows' most important networking functions - the only one that has ever hung it is BITS. You know, that super excellent transferring system MS use for ... well, most people will only use it for Windows Update.
If automatic updates are turned on, simplest thing is to turn them off. You can also terminate the process within Task Manager quite safely. While there is no hard info on the cause of this, I have a theory.
BITS hangs when a connection times out <rolls eyes>.
This most commonly happens after patch Tuesday, for those that don't know MS have taken to batching their updates to once a month. Usually the first Tuesday of the month. Or was it second... whatever. Depending on how large/critical/generally popular the updates are, Windows Update can effectively be denied access for up to two weeks in some cases.
Basically, both BITS and the Windows Update servers are not up to scratch. The WU servers can't handle the load and BITS is programmed terribly. If a timeout occurs, BITS does not respond well. In fact it seems to go into some sort of infinite loop. This usually happens while scanning your machine for updates, but if you make it far enough, it can also happen while downloading the updates.
If automatic updates are turned on, simplest thing is to turn them off. You can also terminate the process within Task Manager quite safely. While there is no hard info on the cause of this, I have a theory.
BITS hangs when a connection times out <rolls eyes>.
This most commonly happens after patch Tuesday, for those that don't know MS have taken to batching their updates to once a month. Usually the first Tuesday of the month. Or was it second... whatever. Depending on how large/critical/generally popular the updates are, Windows Update can effectively be denied access for up to two weeks in some cases.
Basically, both BITS and the Windows Update servers are not up to scratch. The WU servers can't handle the load and BITS is programmed terribly. If a timeout occurs, BITS does not respond well. In fact it seems to go into some sort of infinite loop. This usually happens while scanning your machine for updates, but if you make it far enough, it can also happen while downloading the updates.