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#1
Windows Update making computer unusuable - over 90% RAM usage
My parents have an Acer 5742 laptop with 2GB of RAM (Windows 7 Computer properties reports 1.7GB usable). Every day they complain that the computer is unusable for half an hour or more, usually when they first start it. 'Unusable' means that it's so bogged down that most programs won't start, not even Windows Explorer and it takes some time even to get Task Manager to start. Programs already started don't respond for 30 seconds or so to even a single click.
I've investigated the problem with Task Manager and Process Explorer and it's pretty clear that all the RAM is being used up (Task Manager reports 92-94% Physical Memory use). Process Explorer shows that the svchost.exe instance which has wuauclt.exe (Windows Update) as a sub-process is the culprit, with RAM usage for this svchost.exe being 750MB-1GB.
Is there anyway to stop Windows Update going crazy like this every day? Would creating a bigger swap file help?