Trusted Installer gobbling up my processor usage

Hi,

This problem has happened quite a few times (though not every day) so thought I'd ask you about it.

I have an Acer Aspire 5742 running Windows 7 Home Premium. Normally, whilst under minimal load, the fans are quite quiet, and temperatures are 50-60'C (normal for this laptop). Under intense load, the fans speed up and the temperatures go up. Which is expected. However....

Some days, the temperatures will always remain quite high, and the CPU usage also is quite high, even when "idling". Opening Task Manager (under admin) reveals there is a program called "Trusted Installer" (trustedinstaller.exe) which gobbles up up to 25% of my processor, and will not back down. This results in the laptop getting very hot (the 5742s have a heating issue) and could result in shutdown if you don't keep an eye on things.

Killing the process via Task Manager is often of little help, because it starts itself back up and continues to gobble up my CPU.

Other times, it has also be known for SVCHost (whatever that is) to do the same thing - and killing that via TM can sometimes require a whole reboot of the laptop.

Since I mentioned (in another thread) that this laptop runs quite hot, is there any way of trying to sort this issue out? Ideally getting rid of this [un]trusted installer but stopping it from gobbling CPU power is also helpful. That process is the last thing I would want to run on my laptop!

Thanks.

And... Untrusted Installer (I would never trust that thing on my PC) done it's weird thing with the processor again today!

I will have to have a look a bit later on this evening and follow the steps, and report back to you about what happens.

Thanks for your help :)

Callender said:

What startup tab?

Start> Run

then type

services.msc

Press Enter

Right click Windows Update service and set to disabled. Reboot.

Note: It's not supposed to be permanently disabled. It's okay to disable it for test purposes.

Hi, thanks for clarifying here.

What I done was went to msconfig and tried turning off windows updates that way. Rebooted the laptop. Just now, I have clicked on the prompt that came up, about windows updates being turned off (that white flag thing in the notification bar) and un-trusted whatever-it-is started eating CPU again. Manually killed it from task manager and everything is ok now.

Next time, if it does it again, I'll go into services.msc and see if disabling it that way helps - chances are there is an issue with windows update...

Callender said:

If the problem persists it might be worth running Brink's script to reset Windows Updates. Option 3.1 in the tutorial here:

Windows Update - Reset

If that doesn't fix it then the fix could be tricky.

Hi,

Thanks for the information, I'll definitely have a look tomorrow if it does it again. Hopefully this will fix it.

Btw, when you say the fix could be "tricky", what do you mean - could it be as bad as having to back up everything, and reinstall Windows? As I don't have any windows discs whatsoever.

If it came down to a Windows re-install then I'd probably retire the laptop and pay my university computer shop to dual boot my new HP with windows 7 and 10 (I made a thread about this on the Ten Forums) - or just put up with the intermittent issue of having to force close Trustedinstaller ever few seconds....

Also, out of interest, is there a program that is like the Windows Task Manager, that can sense a certain task appearing and killing the task automatically on sight?