How to tell what program is launching softwareupdated? My Macbook was running really slow after opening it up and so I opened Activity Monitor and saw one process called softwareupdated that was not responding. It didn't say it was using any CPU but my laptop was crawling. I force quit it but then it restarted again. So I looked it up online and saw that App Store uses it (and maybe others). So I opened App Store and ran update. It seemed to use the process as it showed 104% CPU. Then when it was done it went back to 0 CPU. Still it showed in red that it was not responding. 

How do I know what process is calling this? How do I prevent it from being called? 

Pictures:
softwareupdated process:


softwareupdated process when clicking update in OS X App Store:


double clicking on the process in Activity Monitor:


app store preferences and settings:
To answer your question which program is launching the softwareupdated:

In your System Preferences, click on the App Store.

It will show you the settings for updates.

Normal is to have it check for Software Updates continuously, that will explain the softwareupdated running in your Activity Monitor.

There you can also set what happens next, like download and auto install or not etc...