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Well, I woke up this morning. But not my PC... - I got those Windows Update blues

"Are we seeing you at the ten o'clock conference?" said one of my favourite PR Bunnies, waking me up at 8.45 this morning.
A question which, I found, I couldn't answer, because my computer was running like a Vogon functionary without the right form. Help came from my excellent friend Paul, who does tech support at a University: "A bug in the update software introduced recently is causing some Windows machines to hang or run very slowly as this month's updates arrive."

He reports that it will be fixed next month or so, but a hotfix is available if required. This affects "microsoft Update" not simple "Windows Update", as the problem is in scanning Office files.

There's a description  of the problem, and you can get the hotfix from the Microsoft web servers too.

"You should also update the update client from here," he reports. "I have tried it on a few machines, including my one at home, and it has fixed the unresponsiveness issue, and while svchost still takes a huge chunk of CPU time, it is better."

There's some useful background on the issue - about a fortnight ago, at Technet.