Laptop hanging on auto-update when first switched on

Hi RogueViper,
 
For XP, this is not that unusual unfortunately. It's important to understand the autoupdate process to know why this becomes a problem over time. AU starts by downloading the 'list' of current files from the CID and comparing these with it's local list. If a difference is established (no matter how small), the entire SAV cache folder is then linked using junction points to the tempsavxp folder (this process though only links is still quite IO intensive and you can see this if you ever 'view updating status' where you'll see nothing yet downloaded and the disk drive thrashing away with 'connecting to server' then 'downloading' (the actual downloading will probably occur very fast). Once downloaded, the old SAVXP folder is deleted from the cache and the TEMPSAVXP folder then moved to SAVXP and the installation/update commences.
 
Moving this block of 100MB's+ constantly over time causes huge amounts of disk fragmentation on the drive and over time, the machine gets worse and worse until you see times very much like you are seeing. It used to be much more noticeable under v.7 than v.10 before junction points were introduced but it's still a significant problem in v.10.
 
Fairly easy remedy is to run defrag not just the once, run it 2 or 3 times to properly consolidate the file pieces. Also, check that the pageing file is not defragmented at the same time and if it is, use pagedefrag (from sysinternals) to consolidate that after you have run a full disk defrag.
 
Rule of thumb to remember, a disk with > 60% space used will fragment much more quickly than you would expect so it's worthwhile if you can, making sure that you keep below this golden number.
 
The problem is not so apparent on Vista and 7 because they have built-in tasks to defrag disks all the time which means you don't tend to run into this problem as much.
 
Matt

Hi RogueViper,
 
For XP, this is not that unusual unfortunately. It's important to understand the autoupdate process to know why this becomes a problem over time. AU starts by downloading the 'list' of current files from the CID and comparing these with it's local list. If a difference is established (no matter how small), the entire SAV cache folder is then linked using junction points to the tempsavxp folder (this process though only links is still quite IO intensive and you can see this if you ever 'view updating status' where you'll see nothing yet downloaded and the disk drive thrashing away with 'connecting to server' then 'downloading' (the actual downloading will probably occur very fast). Once downloaded, the old SAVXP folder is deleted from the cache and the TEMPSAVXP folder then moved to SAVXP and the installation/update commences.
 
Moving this block of 100MB's+ constantly over time causes huge amounts of disk fragmentation on the drive and over time, the machine gets worse and worse until you see times very much like you are seeing. It used to be much more noticeable under v.7 than v.10 before junction points were introduced but it's still a significant problem in v.10.
 
Fairly easy remedy is to run defrag not just the once, run it 2 or 3 times to properly consolidate the file pieces. Also, check that the pageing file is not defragmented at the same time and if it is, use pagedefrag (from sysinternals) to consolidate that after you have run a full disk defrag.
 
Rule of thumb to remember, a disk with > 60% space used will fragment much more quickly than you would expect so it's worthwhile if you can, making sure that you keep below this golden number.
 
The problem is not so apparent on Vista and 7 because they have built-in tasks to defrag disks all the time which means you don't tend to run into this problem as much.
 
Matt