svchost using high cpu often like clockwork

When I wake my laptop and start the internet (right after waking), generally after 3-4 minutes this svchost kicks up which involves;

(task scheduler, themes, windows updates, windows profiler services, application information, background intelligent transfer service, extensible authentication protocol, IKE and AuthIp Ipsec keying modules, windows management instrumentation, system event notification services)

This will take up to 7-8 minutes and use around 80% of the CPU and most of the Physical memory. Is this a normal process and my underpowered laptop just not up to the task? It stops shortly and then all is well, no lags or high usage, but I thought I'd see if this process is indeed a "greedy" one naturally.

I have not run into this on WIN 7, but on both my WIN XP machines I had the same problem.
I fixed both by going to" Microsoft Update" (which I had enabled a long time ago) and disabled it, allowing to it revert back to "Windows Update" only (without looking for all Microsoft application updates only Windows OS). I then disabled Win Auto Updates.

Svchost dropped from 100% to 0%. I now just manually check for updates. Don't know if this will work for you but just thought I'd toss it out there.

Also if you have any HP Multifunction Print drivers on your machine, they have been known to cause the same issue with svchost at least on XP.

So this problem seemed to go away a while ago, but last night my laptop was inoperable for 20 mins with 100% memory and upwards to 80% cpu. Any ideas or has anyone experienced this on 7?