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Stuck In A Cycle - Help Please!
mourinhosmissus
Posts: 5,593 Forum Member
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As I shut done my laptop on Friday, I ran some updates that were waiting to be run. Then when I tried to switch it on again on Saturday, it got stuck in this cycle:-
It starts to boot up, then says 'configuring updates 3 of 3 0% complete' 'please do not turn off your computer'.
Then after a few seconds it shuts itself down and repeats the above over and over and over again. I left it running for a while in the hope that it would fix itself but it didn't. Sometimes, just before it shuts down, it says 'welcome' with the little Vista circle but after about 30 seconds it goes back to 'shutting down'. It was no better yesterday either.
Does anyone know how I can break this cycle please? I did try hitting F2, F5 & F8 at the booting-up stage but as I know nothing, it was no help (don't even know why I tried this!).
My OS is Vista.
Thanks in advance.
It starts to boot up, then says 'configuring updates 3 of 3 0% complete' 'please do not turn off your computer'.
Then after a few seconds it shuts itself down and repeats the above over and over and over again. I left it running for a while in the hope that it would fix itself but it didn't. Sometimes, just before it shuts down, it says 'welcome' with the little Vista circle but after about 30 seconds it goes back to 'shutting down'. It was no better yesterday either.
Does anyone know how I can break this cycle please? I did try hitting F2, F5 & F8 at the booting-up stage but as I know nothing, it was no help (don't even know why I tried this!).
My OS is Vista.
Thanks in advance.
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Power off the computer>
Turn it back on>
Keep pressing F8 until you see a black screen with lots of white text on it.
Select "Safe Mode with Networking."
Does it do the same?
http://neosmart.net/blog/2008/windows-vista-recovery-disc-download/
Once you've burned this on to a CD, you can follow the instructions here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949358
The only part that I needed to do was to rename the Pending.xml file, although it may be different for you.
The other option you have is to restore the machine back to factory settings by pressing the relevant key when you switch on. The manual will give you further details. Note that all your files will be lost if you choose this method.
There is no need to recover the whole OS becuase you can use System restore to restore back.
System restore on the "Vista Recovery Disc" works excellent becuase I have used it several times.
It may have worked for the specific problem you had, but in this case it is unlikely.
Surely it may well stop the update install? Never know until you try, but I do speak as someone who has little faith in S/R anyway.
When I came across this problem previously (stuck in a loop, 3 of 3 updates, 0% installed - often caused by a failed SP1 install), System Restore wouldn't fix it. However, it may still be worth trying SR, as I find that it is one of the best features MS introduced in to Windows. It may not fix serious problems, but it can save a lot of time troubleshooting 'average' problems. Plus it can be an easy way for non-techy people to get their system back up and running properly.
Ooh, which key is that?
I actually do have the Vista disc and last night I tried to boot up with the disc in the drive both before I booted up and after I booted up but whichever way I tried it, it wouldn't work. The drive started whirring as if it was reading the disc but then it just went quiet and ignored it.
I did press the various F keys as it booted up and on one of the screens it does say something about reading the DVD drive during boot-up, so I would have thought that that would mean that if the disc was in the drive before I booted up, it would read it - wouldn't it?
Am I doing something silly? How do I get my laptop to recognise the Vista disc?
If you have a Vista disk instead of a recovery partition, you will need to manually install Vista and all drivers and programs. To boot from the disk, go into the BIOS and change the Boot Device Order so that the CD/DVD drive is above the hard drive. Make sure you read some guides on installing Windows if you have never done it before.
I did have the Vista disc but my laptop wasn't recognising it during boot-up, so I hit the F2 button during boot-up and altered the order in which it booted up so that it went to the CD/DVD drive first. This worked, so I did a system restore from the disc and here I am typing this from said laptop! For someone who's not as tecky as I'd like to be, I'm quite proud of myself and it's all thanks to you on here.