I just upgraded my harddisk but now during re-install I face the problem of a windows-update (update.microsoft.com) total freeze! :(

But let's be systematical:
- M200, 1,6 GHz, latest BIOS, 768 MB RAM (Yonas I think)
- Removal of the original 60 GB harddisk and replacement with a Hitache Travelstar 7K100 100 GB
- As described and advised on this fabulous forum years ago I back-up'ed / imaged my original harddisk before the very first start-up of my M200. This image was transfered to the new 100 GB drive with no problems.
- First start of the M200 with the new HDD, no problems, everything went fine, same procedure of putting in all my personal data as way back when I did this with the original HDD 3 years ago.

- Then visiting update.microsoft.com and first of all downloading and installing Windows XP Service Pack 2. Restart etc. as usual.
- Then re-visiting update.microsoft.com and downloading all the other updates 'after' Service Pack 2. Installing those.
- Still no problems.

- Today I installed my MS Office 2003 Professional and also the Proofing Tools for MS Office. Activating by phone with no problems.

- Then I installed my MS OneNote 2003 which came with my M200. Activationby phone with no problems.


- Now I want to bring also MS Office up to date with the latest security patches etc ... and the trouble started:
update.microsoft.com in Internet Explorer [IE6 (and later IE7)] freezes during the check of which updates are needed!!! :(

- Fan is turning full power, the whole system gets terribly slow, nearly not reacting.

- CPU load in taskmanager shows 100 % ... contineously. ;(
- "wuauclt.exe" eats up a lot of memory, but "svchost.exe" even more! Also "svchost.exe" eats up 97-99 % of the CPU time. Attempts to lower priority fails: access denied.;(

This kept me busy for the last hours :( [it's 2h30 at night down here] and I do not have a clou how to get out of this! ;( I tried to upgrade IE to 7 and let him do the job: no success (only an even uglier IE than ever)

I do not want to re-install everything from scratch (I could do another image-recovery) as I do not know what will happen if tomorrow again I will activate my MS Office and MS OneNote.

Could it be that I should have installed the software (MS Office and MS OneNote) before I installed the Service Pack 2 and the other patches??? Or is this just coincidence?

Also I realized that my old bad 'friend' SMax4PNP is again starting to tease my and disturbing shutdown of the system. I had the same problem with the old installation and just was happy that at the beginning the SoundMax-driver behaved nicely.

Anyway: what should I do???

I am quite frustrated and desperate by now ... so please: help!!!

Thanks in advance!
eT