Runtime Duration of SP Foundation Usage Data Import Timer Job keeps Increasing...

Hello,

Using SharePoint 2010 here...

Something is strange with the Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Usage Data Import Timer job that runs in each server in our Farm.

It is scheduld to run every 30 minutes.  Historically, Looking at the History for this job, I see that it usually runs for a second or two, and then completes.

This weekend we applied the latest Server and OS patches to our Farm servers (whatever was new in the past Month... we try to keep pretty current). Ever since then, something strange is happening.  Each time the job runs, it takes about a minute or so Longer each time to complete. When I came in this morning, I saw that these jobs that usually take 2 seconds to run were now taking 45 MINUTES to run. They run so long in fact that the nightly OWSTIMER Re-Cycle job fails, because it gives up waiting for running jobs to complete after 10 minutes.

So, in an attempt to fix this, I waited for the 45-minute-running jobs to complete, and then kicked off the OWSTIMER Reset job manually, which then completed normally. After that, I saw that the running time for the Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Usage Data Import jobs were back down to less than a minute. I thought that I had the problem licked, but now since then I see that the completion times are once again growing by a minute each time.

Does anybody have any ideas on what is going on, where to look next, etc?    I'm pretty sure that the culprit would have been one of the OS Patches that got applied.  Anybody seen something similar lately?

Patches applied include OS Security Updates and .NET Security Updates.

Any Ideas?

Thanks!