It looks like they are security updates for mostly Windows, but also IE 8. If you think it is one of the updates, you can uninstall them using the programs and features area of the control panel. Open that and then click on View Installed Updates.
As far as I know, there does not seem to be known problems with them.
You can check you system to see what might be using CPU time with the Task Manager or even the Performance Monitor. Can you tell exactly what is crawling? Is it the entire system or just the internet connection. Maybe something is trying to access the internet and causing delays while trying.