Windows XP slow due to update of Internet Explorer 8

Over the last couple of weeks I have been getting complaints from customers that Windows XP on old systems is running a lot slower than usual. I did some investigation as to what was causing the apparent slowdown and determined that Windows Update was running shortly after the system started and the svchost.exe was taking 100% of the CPU time. Clearly not a good situation.

Trying to stop svchost.exe did the trick for awhile, but back it came. I was really concerned when I had to rebuild a Windows XP system and it happened when I installed all the latest updates. Further research via Google pointed to a problem Internet Explorer update. If the Update service detects you do not have the latest IE update that is currently available it starts to search the whole IE updates tree to see what you need - instead of just offering the current cumulative update for your system. But if you manually install the update yourself the Update service finds Internet Explorer is fully updated and doesn't search for any IE updates.

The temporary fix is to load the Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer 8 for Windows XP (KB2898785). This was released on December 10th but could only fix the problem until Microsoft releases a permanent fix in a future monthly cycle.