How Windows Update destroyed my FSX performance and how I fixed it

[TheFamilyMan 280]

About a week ago, after several days being away from my computer, I brought up FSX and proceeded to load a new flight.  It took about 3 times longer than usual to load, and once in the VC my FPS was constantly bouncing from 12 to 30.  Usually it's rock solid at 30 where it's fixed.  Flew for about 2 minutes with no relief, and shut FSX down completely.  Brought up Task Manager, it showed an scvhost.exe chewing up 25% of my cpu along with about 300MB of memory.  After some frantic research it turns out this problem was not a overt virus but a sick Windows Update doing nothing productive while 24/7 eating a fair chunk of my processing power.  The easy fix was to completely disable the windows update service; this works but IMO is not acceptable.  More research led to what finally worked to fix the situation (which I guess arose from my diligent efforts to keep MS from installing Win 10 on my computer).  So here is what worked for me:

 

1.  A complete wipe and reset of Windows Update using Option 3 from this:  http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/91738-windows-update-reset.html.  I also ran the Windows Fix It which these instruction give.  I closely examined the .bat file before proceeding and it is exactly what MS gives as their manual fix.  I ran it with zero side effects (multiple times at that, though hopefully you won't need to).

 

2.  Then manually installed this windows update:  https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=52794

 

Both steps were necessary to get Windows Update back to normal operations.  All I can say is "thanks to your deity of choice for Google".  I burned up several hours trying LOTS of stuff before getting this all settled.  I just hope this post will save someone else the misery I went though.

 

As a footnote, all this unhides those nasty Win 10 related updates, KB3035583, KB2952664 and KB3123862, which will eventually show up again.  Be sure to hide them as they show up.  If you don't know what I am talking out here, then don't bother with this note.

[pete_auau 1,158]

As a footnote, all this unhides those nasty Win 10 related updates, KB3035583, KB2952664 and KB3123862, which will eventually show up again. Be sure to hide them as they show up. If you don't know what I am talking out here, then don't bother with this note.

 

No need  to hide  anything  now  if  you  use  this

 

http://ultimateoutsider.com/downloads/

 

 

http://www.avsim.com/topic/490391-being-badgered-by-ms-to-upgrade-to-win-10/

[TheFamilyMan 280]

After some thought, the second step above may have been all that I needed to do.  Unfortunately that fix was a later discovery in my quest,  As for tools such as the GWX panel, I appreciate what this tool can to and I'm glad it works for those that need it (as in for computers already such polluted), but I prefer and recommend keeping those offending updates from ever touching a windows install, at least for those that were diligent about it in the first place.

[TheFamilyMan 280]

An update to this problem.  My wife's laptop started acting up with this problem about a month ago.  All my above "fixes" did nothing.  Turns out that MS has recently released an optional update with solves this problem once and for all (hopefully): https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/kb/3172605