^ very interesting, thanks app 
Wont get back to it till tuesday now probably -- I had already reduced windows update to just notify -- will now turn off completely.
(So, I do end up following your advice miles :-)
A bit wary of not having an up-to-date machine for a basic user -- but it's better than a burnt out machine 
EDIT// my own machine seems to be ok now -- just checked for updates, and it didnt arouse the CPU hogger.
Will sleep.
-tomos
I have mine set to download, but notify before installing. I did not disable Windows Update. I only stopped the service when it started using too much CPU. That way it can start up again, on it's own. And I manually checked for updates after every reboot, and tried to install them (but usually failed, till after I changed ISP)
One thing I didn't think to do, at the time, was to take my laptop somewhere else that has free wifi, and try to manually run Windows Update there. If I had, perhaps the problem might have been solved sooner. (Or maybe not?)
So, if it's a laptop, that might be something you'd want to try, first. Either a friend's house, an internet café, or elsewhere, where you can use a different ISP to see if you can get it to download those updates it seems to be stuck on.