forget,
I don't want to appear a harbinger of further trouble but mrs batninth's laptop had this problem before it decided to escalate matters & stop working completely. Eventually the auto update function wouldn't start from svchost.
To get it back, I ended up turning off Automatic Update & restating the thing. I then manually updated from Microsoft using the option in the IE browser. When all Express Updates were done, I then restarted again, turned auto update back on and restarted again.
I suggest that you do that same as the folks at MS don't appear too interested in the problem as it stands, so get rid of it by manually updating. You can thank Mr Balmer & his troops for wasting another hour of your life.