Solved Can the source of Windows Updates be changed?

[needsleep]

I did the unthinkable- I opened an email I knew was spam and alarms flashed across my screen from both Windows Defender and Kaspersky. Afterwards, on a reboot, I noticed a message come up momentarily that said something like, "Source for Windows Updates changed." I googled, with no hits. Can such be configured? If it's displayed, it must be configurable. But did I really see it?

I also now see a black screen momentarily on the "going down" side of a restart. Is there any way to go down in stages, to see what is being displayed? If not, is there any way to access the picture or warning that is being displayed? Is there a log file that would display this?

I've been offline for a week trying various ways to scan for viruses. Safe mode scan, regular mode scan, Kaspersky virus removal tool scan, Kaspersky Rescue Disk 10 scan. Nothing so far.

No repeats of 50% CPU utilization after restart, I cautiously return to familiar haunts. It wasn't Kaspersky startup scanning. It was an svchost.exe process.

Thanks,

 

[NoelDP]

In theory, almost anything can be changed on a Windows computer.
In practice it's not that easy - especially for a critical service like WU.
It would require Admin privileges, to start with (you're not running with UAC disabled, I hope?)

If you upload your c:\Windows\windowsupdate.log file, it may show us where you're getting your updates from - there was a recent Windows Update Agent update, which installed itself in the background, so you may just have seen that happening.

 

[needsleep]

Thanks for the reply. I got BSOD last night so I reformated C and I'm reinstalling Win 7 today. Hopefully that will fix everything. D: (data) and E: (backups) are on separate partitions.

 

[LMiller7]

Backups should be on a separate physical drive, not just a partition. If the drive fails you will lose everything, including backups.

 

[NoelDP]

Backups should be on a separate physical drive, not just a partition. If the drive fails you will lose everything, including backups.

Gotta say that I agree with that!