Windows update checking for updates and checking and checking

It was a little too hot in the garden on Saturday and I worked on a laptop.

This laptop had issues!

It starts up fine.  Then all of a sudden it just freezes.

On investigation I found that the Windows Update was not happening and when the update procedure runs it just goes on and on and on, without actually doing anything.  It takes all the available memory, therefore, causing the freeze.  To get it moving again the Service had to be stopped.

I tried resetting Update using this  from SevenForums I tried the 3rd option which initially made no difference

I ran disk clean up in Safe mode.  Which from the song and dance it did on reboot you would think it had cleared the problem.  There were 9.5GBs of Update files which it deleted.  When it rebooted it when through the whole windows configuring stuff.  Then it said Cleaning.  

Eventually it rebooted, but the update service was still stealing all the RAM.

I noticed that the AV was being weird as well so I uninstalled that.

I tried resetting Update again using the same 3rd option from the SevenForums site. Rebooting and changed the updates from automatic to manual, which did nothing really it just gave me a sense of control over the whole affair!

It sat there Checking for updates and the green whooshy thing going across for ages.  Then after quite a long while, a couple of hours, it showed that there were updates to be applied.  I applied the updates, which in itself was an occasion worthy of celebration!

Rebooted. 

It has settled down to just using half the available RAM.  So, Laptop Sorted!
I can reinstall the AV.