Thousands of Updates

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Hi all. I'm trying to get my mom's laptop running faster. I have tried most programs that I would normally use and use on my own PC, but they have only helped so much. There is one main warning sign pointing to problems I don't know how to handle. That would be the amount of updates that it runs. In the last 4 days, I have booted it up only to have between 8000 and 9500 updates on three occasions. Yesterday it booted up to install 13 updates, then after that it went straight to 8000+ updates. This update screen is not the blue windows screen with the blue circular icon (mouse pointer), but it is a black screen with grey letters. I watch and the majority of the updates are going to /Registry/machine & /Registry/machine/Schema ..... can anyone please point me to figuring this out?? And to provide a few details, it is an HP with win7 (legitimate copy), legitimate Anti-virus. I will provide more specific details if necessary. I have run deep scans, quick scans, and also various different operations through CCleaner. I am going to go defragment right now. I am trying to avoid wiping it (if necessary) as she has a ton of saved pswds for her business and family photos as well. Thank you in advance for any help you provide.
 

Shintaro

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Welcome to the W7Forums.

Have you installed Windows SP1? Located HERE.
What about HP support assistant?
 
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In the last 4 days, I have booted it up only to have between 8000 and 9500 updates on three occasions. Yesterday it booted up to install 13 updates, then after that it went straight to 8000+ updates. This update screen is not the blue windows screen with the blue circular icon (mouse pointer), but it is a black screen with grey letters. I watch and the majority of the updates are going to /Registry/machine & /Registry/machine/Schema ..... .
If the computer is way behind on updates, there might be a backlist of dozens. Since some of them often must be loaded in a specific order, some will fail the update and reappear the next time, so it can take a number of runs to work your way through the list. I'm not aware of anything from Microsoft that just updates registry entries, and even if there was, it would never be in the quantities you describe. I don't know exactly how many entries there are in a typical registry, but I'm guessing that you could recreate the entire thing with the cumulative quantities you describe.

Updates replace programs. The registry doesn't contain any programs, it is basically just a big, centralized list of settings. There is no legitimate reason to change or add massive numbers of entries. Also, the black screen you describe sounds like something is being run in a command window. A lot of maintenance gets performed in Linux in a command window but not typically in Windows.

Whatever is doing this doesn't belong there. It is behaving like malicious software, although it's possible that some program got seriously corrupted. If the AV programs don't find anything, you should use a more serious approach to stop it or you are likely to find that the computer will stop working.

Try booting in safe mode with command prompt. Then run msconfig and see if anything unusual is listed. You also have nothing to lose running SFC /scannow. It doesn't sound like something this will fix, but it can't hurt to try.

If the problem is being caused by something that is part of the Windows distribution package, there is a way to replace Windows "in-place" without losing everything else. You need the Windows installation disk to do it. Not very many computers come with them any more; you get them when you buy the retail package, the OEM version typically just gets backed up to a restore partition. If you have the Windows disk, see this link: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2255099 It doesn't sound like the problem is caused by something that is part of Windows, but this is the next-least-destructive thing to try.

If that is not an option or doesn't work, the best thing to do may be to start over. I can't think of a clean, non-destructive way to get rid of a program that is not part of Windows if you don't know what it is and AV software doesn't recognize it. Use Safe Mode with Command Prompt to copy all of the user files to another drive or storage medium. Limit it to just your own (or her own) files; you don't want to save a misbehaving program, go through all the work of redoing the computer, restore your files, and have the problem start all over again.

Then recover Windows (reinstall it if you have a disk but not a recovery partition; if you have both options, do a recovery). Afterwards, it will be like a new computer. You will probably have to reinstall all of your software and configure everything like your email accounts, preferences for everything, etc.
 

TrainableMan

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You didn't really specify what kind of updates. If it is anti-virus software that is updating that could just be thousands of virus definitions but would be pretty fast. Many other programs attempt to auto-update such as google, java, and flash, as well as updates from Dell or HP; these wouldn't download thousands of updates but what you could be seeing is the filesize of the update being downloaded.

If it is actually Windows Updates then first try running Microsoft Fix-it for Windows Updates and then actually leave the computer on long enough for all the updates to download and install. And understand that some new updates ma appear once a prerequisite item is installed.
 

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