And everything was going so well...

[Dave_07]

Hey all,

wuauclt.exe has been causing me some problems..

A few days/weeks ago, don't know how long exactly, Process Guard started warning about a program called "wuauclt.exe" (process guard is like a firewall for background process's) A warning about wuauclt.exe comes up when the comp is started up, and at random intervals aswell. I just block it everytime, because i thought that wuauclt.exe was AutoUpdate, or so www.liutilities.com says. Also its strange because wuauclt.exe is auto-update for windows Me, and i'm on Xp Home ?

One time, i accidentally pressed the "allow once" button instead of the "block" button for wuauclt.exe. Thats when the problems started. After wuauclt.exe was allowed to run nothing would work, my browser, avg update, hjt update, steam, all were dead. Then when i tried a reconnect, it said the line was busy. After a few redial attempts it connected again, and from then on it had no problem connecting. However even though i was apparently connected, still nothing would work, browser, avg update, steam etc etc.

I blocked wuauclt.exe in process guard, Blocked "Windows Update AutoUpdate Client" in Zonealarm, and restarted comp (had to do this a few times) I also turned off automatic updates. This is when i discovered something else new. The automatic updates tab in system properties in the control panel had changed.

It used to look like this:


Now it looks like this:


I thought that the automatic updates tab was only changed like this when u download SP2, but i have not, as, ever since i can remember, I have always had the automatic update settings set to: "Notify me about new updates, & Notify me again be for installing them." So it shouldn't have downloaded sp2 without me knowing. But i guess when i allowed wuauclt.exe to run it maybe override that ? plus winver command says i'm still running sp1.

Also this wuauclt.exe is really annoying, as each time i block it, it still gets added to the taskmanager list, making the number of background process's running larger and larger. eg: 46 process's ! 19 of them being: wuauclt.exe and i can't end task it either, so it just fills up taskmanager, each one using 160K. which drivers up the commit charge to 240M / 1982M.

As it stands now:
Well things seem to be ok now, the browser is working and just updated avg successfully and ran a complete avg scan. Nothing was detected.
HijackThis also finds nothing. (HJT ver: 1.98.0.2)

Basically this supposedly is a program that should NOT cause any problems like this. How can i stop wuauclt.exe constantly being added to taskman, and how can i get automatic updates working properly again. It used to just run once at start up, and then again when a connection was made. If there were updates available then the little system tray icon would appear, notifying you. If not, it would shutdown and disappear off taskman. It never used to do anything that warranted a reaction off process guard, nore did it constantly try to run when the first run request was denied, and clog up taskman..
So why has AutoUpdate become so disruptive ?

All ideas and suggestions welcome, Dave