Windows Update cannot currently check for updates, because the service is not running. You may need to restart your computer.

This error is shown even when the Windows update is actually running on the system.The solution to this problem could be solved by deleting all recently downloaded updates and then retrying. It may be that update might have got corrupted which might have triggered Windows to think that service is not running.

Steps

1. Stop the Windows Update service on your Windows 7.

a) Go to Start. Type services.msc in search box.Press Enter.

b) Windows Service dialog will appear. Scroll to Windows Update service and right click to select the Stop option.

2. Go to folder with path C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\ . Delete all the files and folder within this folder.

3. Once you have deleted the contents, go back to services dialog and similar to step 1, start the Windows Update service. All the files and folders will be recreated.

Hopefully this should solve your problem. In case, it does not then you might have to remove and reinstall all Windows updates. If any of you has any other solution, we would love to hear that.

So what is svchost.exe

Microsoft describes svchost.exe as “ Svchost.exe is a generic host process name for services that run from dynamic-link libraries (DLLs).”

When Microsoft decided to move all functionality for internal windows service to .dll files to .exe files, the services needed a executable file to launch as .dll could not be launched directly. Thus came in svchost.exe

The Svchost.exe file is located in the %SystemRoot%\System32 folder. At startup, Svchost.exe checks the services part of the registry to construct a list of services that it must load. Multiple instances of Svchost.exe can run at the same time. Each Svchost.exe session can contain a grouping of services. Therefore, separate services can run, depending on how and where Svchost.exe is started. This grouping of services allows for better control and easier debugging.

Why are so many process named svchost running on the system ?

There are numerous service provided by the windows which usually run on our system. If these services ran as individual services , it would be tough to manage them and non functionality of all might lead to that of others, so they are separated and categorized into groups.

These services are logically categorized into different groups and then a single svchost.exe instance in created for each group. The number of services running under a group may differ in number, so one group may run 3 services and another group may be running 5 services.

What can you do to free up memory ?

You can decide on which service are not necessary and you can do without and then you can disable or stop those services. Also if a single svchost service is showing a lot of CPU usage, you can restart these services.

First step is to learn which services are running under which svchost.exe instance.

Open Task Manager and see all the svchost.exe instances running on the system. Check the checkbox against ‘Show processes from all users’.

Checking the services under a particular svchost.exe instance

Right click on the svchost process and click on ‘ Go to services option’ .This will open up services tab and the highlighted services show the services running under that instance.

Disabling Services

Type services.msc in run window. Choose the service you want to disable and right click on it. Select properties option.

Change the start up type to disable and then click stop to immediately stop the service.

That should solve the problem of excessive memory usage by svchost.exe