Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Vista hangs (reboot loop) installing update 3 of 3

I had this happen recently (10/20/09). I could not tell what the problem was, nor could I tell what update was failing. I tried safemode boot, last known good config, and repair, none worked.

To resolve this I booted off the Vista installation media, and selected repair. It tried to automatically repair startup configuration, and then came back saying it could not. One of the options was to go into advanced repair options. Chose that. Then chose command prompt. At command prompt:
>cd c:
>cd windows
>cd winsxs
>del pending.xml

Once the file was deleted, rebooted system. System went back to installing update 3 of 3 but this time it worked.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am in exactly the same situation, except Vista came pre-installed. I can't get to a command prompt in safe mode. Any of the F8 options just results in Windows trying to boot up again and getting stuck in the "stage 3 0f 3" loop.

Vista Home Premium-SP2 already installed. 64x

Eric

tobias said...

That sucks. So they didn't provide you with a disc? I had to boot off the disc to accomplish what I described.

TerryRussell said...

Don't worry. You can do this without a CD.

As your PC starts up, keep tapping the F6 key. When the dialog box comes up, press F8. Then select "Repair my PC".

From the next menu, select "Command Prompt"

tobias said...

Cool. Thanks for that. I haven't tried it but that would save a lot of time and effort.

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