MarkyW
SGF, Supreme Grumble Framer
I’ve had a major computer problem going on since about maybe about last November. I figured out a temporary work around that I’m still using. I’m finally getting around to explaining what is going on to see if anyone might know of an answer to get things working right and thought I would try here first.
First I’ll give the short quick version of what’s been happening, then just let me know if you need more details to figure things out, and I’ll add what I can remember.
Basically, my computer is slowing down to a crawl and going into a loop of sorts when it tries to install a “Cumulative Update for Windows”, which never gets installed. It has installed regular “Windows Updates”, but it’s the Cumulative Update that is wacky.
Before I figured out (sort of ) what was going on, I had noticed that the computer was at times acting slow, sometimes extremely slow. I would click on a program and have to wait 5 minutes for it to start. Or I would type in my word processor and letters would come up normally for a bit and then I would have to wait 5-10 second lag before the letters would show up.
My one friend came in from out of state for Christmas and stopped by. I explained some of this to him and he started the “Task Manager” and saw that the “Windows Update” service was at the top of the list of Disk Usage (Disk Usage was maxed out at 100%). He said he’s seen some viruses attach to the Windows Update service. I did think of possible virus problems and did a full scan just about a week before using my Avast antivirus and also Maleware Bytes and they showed everything clean.
I did some more looking around and that’s when I happened to find that the “Cumulative Update for Windows” was acting wonky. It would do a download for a bit, then go into a long “Initializing” step, and then it would start “Installing”. It would go a percent at a time at a decent pace until it got to 24%, then it stayed there for about 15-20 seconds. Then it would go up to 25% and stay there for about 30-40 seconds and then go back to the “Initializing” step and start all over. It would keep doing this over and over and Disk Usage would stay up around 100%.
I looked around online for what to do about Cumulative Updates not installing and found a few things mentioned. I tried a couple of them (don’t remember now what they were, that was back in December and my memory for those kind of details gets mixed up with all the info I’ve been going through). But they didn’t work. I did read about going into the “Services” app from the Search bar on the bottom left of my desktop and then scrolling down to “Windows Update” and click. Then I would click on “Stop” if it was running and then click on “Disable” and “Apply”. This stops it from trying to update so I don’t get my computer to slow to a crawl, BUT I have to do it every day because it resets itself to be able to run update.
I don’t know what the difference is between the Cumulative Update and regular Windows Update, but I would guess that there might be some things that my computer should have in those updates. And that’s why I would like to get things working correctly instead of just bypassing those updates. I do let Windows Update run once in a while so it can install the regular Updates that do install, but otherwise I keep disabling the Update feature.
Any ideas on what could be causing this and more importantly, how to fix it. There was one thing I read about, it was something about going to the Microsoft website and downloading a complete Windows update. I think it had a 3 letter acronym, but I forget it. It’s almost like a reinstall of Windows. That might be my last chance to try.
If you have any questions about what the computer is doing, just ask and I’ll try to answer them if I can.
P.S. Also, a couple other things that are going on with the computer that may or may not be related. Anywhere from about once a week to three times a week, when I start my computer and enter my password, instead of going to my desktop screen like it should, I get my Mozilla Firefox browser. I did look in Task Manager and under Start Up there is nothing for Mozilla nor Firefox at all. I have no idea why it’s doing that.
Also, 2 of my 3 USB ports aren’t working. I have an idea of a reason why for that. Back in early December I took my laptop computer upstairs and put it on my desk. I also had a glass of juice. Well, I accidentally knocked over the juice, but it didn’t go onto my laptop, it went on the desk, but I thought it might have had some splash onto the computer. I hadn’t backed up my QuickBooks so I came downstairs quick and plugged in my USB thumb drive and did the back up. The usual port I would plug that into was on the side I spilled the juice and didn’t think to use the USB on the other side of the computer. It backed up OK and I shut the computer down. The next day when I turned it on an icon came up and I got a dialog box that said my USB was trying to draw too much power. It eventually stopped doing that, although once in a while I see that icon flash for maybe a quarter of a second, but no dialog box comes up. Anyhow, the 2 USB 3.0 ports, one on the left side (where I did the spill) and one on the right side both don’t work. But the USB 2.0 port on the right side does work, so that’s the only USB port I have to use now.
Thanks for any help.
First I’ll give the short quick version of what’s been happening, then just let me know if you need more details to figure things out, and I’ll add what I can remember.
Basically, my computer is slowing down to a crawl and going into a loop of sorts when it tries to install a “Cumulative Update for Windows”, which never gets installed. It has installed regular “Windows Updates”, but it’s the Cumulative Update that is wacky.
Before I figured out (sort of ) what was going on, I had noticed that the computer was at times acting slow, sometimes extremely slow. I would click on a program and have to wait 5 minutes for it to start. Or I would type in my word processor and letters would come up normally for a bit and then I would have to wait 5-10 second lag before the letters would show up.
My one friend came in from out of state for Christmas and stopped by. I explained some of this to him and he started the “Task Manager” and saw that the “Windows Update” service was at the top of the list of Disk Usage (Disk Usage was maxed out at 100%). He said he’s seen some viruses attach to the Windows Update service. I did think of possible virus problems and did a full scan just about a week before using my Avast antivirus and also Maleware Bytes and they showed everything clean.
I did some more looking around and that’s when I happened to find that the “Cumulative Update for Windows” was acting wonky. It would do a download for a bit, then go into a long “Initializing” step, and then it would start “Installing”. It would go a percent at a time at a decent pace until it got to 24%, then it stayed there for about 15-20 seconds. Then it would go up to 25% and stay there for about 30-40 seconds and then go back to the “Initializing” step and start all over. It would keep doing this over and over and Disk Usage would stay up around 100%.
I looked around online for what to do about Cumulative Updates not installing and found a few things mentioned. I tried a couple of them (don’t remember now what they were, that was back in December and my memory for those kind of details gets mixed up with all the info I’ve been going through). But they didn’t work. I did read about going into the “Services” app from the Search bar on the bottom left of my desktop and then scrolling down to “Windows Update” and click. Then I would click on “Stop” if it was running and then click on “Disable” and “Apply”. This stops it from trying to update so I don’t get my computer to slow to a crawl, BUT I have to do it every day because it resets itself to be able to run update.
I don’t know what the difference is between the Cumulative Update and regular Windows Update, but I would guess that there might be some things that my computer should have in those updates. And that’s why I would like to get things working correctly instead of just bypassing those updates. I do let Windows Update run once in a while so it can install the regular Updates that do install, but otherwise I keep disabling the Update feature.
Any ideas on what could be causing this and more importantly, how to fix it. There was one thing I read about, it was something about going to the Microsoft website and downloading a complete Windows update. I think it had a 3 letter acronym, but I forget it. It’s almost like a reinstall of Windows. That might be my last chance to try.
If you have any questions about what the computer is doing, just ask and I’ll try to answer them if I can.
P.S. Also, a couple other things that are going on with the computer that may or may not be related. Anywhere from about once a week to three times a week, when I start my computer and enter my password, instead of going to my desktop screen like it should, I get my Mozilla Firefox browser. I did look in Task Manager and under Start Up there is nothing for Mozilla nor Firefox at all. I have no idea why it’s doing that.
Also, 2 of my 3 USB ports aren’t working. I have an idea of a reason why for that. Back in early December I took my laptop computer upstairs and put it on my desk. I also had a glass of juice. Well, I accidentally knocked over the juice, but it didn’t go onto my laptop, it went on the desk, but I thought it might have had some splash onto the computer. I hadn’t backed up my QuickBooks so I came downstairs quick and plugged in my USB thumb drive and did the back up. The usual port I would plug that into was on the side I spilled the juice and didn’t think to use the USB on the other side of the computer. It backed up OK and I shut the computer down. The next day when I turned it on an icon came up and I got a dialog box that said my USB was trying to draw too much power. It eventually stopped doing that, although once in a while I see that icon flash for maybe a quarter of a second, but no dialog box comes up. Anyhow, the 2 USB 3.0 ports, one on the left side (where I did the spill) and one on the right side both don’t work. But the USB 2.0 port on the right side does work, so that’s the only USB port I have to use now.
Thanks for any help.