How to fix Vista Updates that are stuck in a loop

A common error occurs with Windows Vista computers where the third stage of an update reads "Configurating updates: stage 3 of 3 - 0% complete"

Here the computer will freeze and then the computer will then reboot, and continue to reboot and reboot endlessly. Some users have said that it happened due to a power cut during the update whilst other report that it just occured for no reason.

I recently experienced this on a clients computer.

If you restart the computer and hit the F8 button (on most computers) it will give you a list of options including "repair your computer" This option will allow you to try repair the startup problems that have occurred. This however in my case did not help

The second thing to try is to try the same method of entering repair, but to choose System Restore. This will try restore the computer to a previous state when the computer was working. This again, did not work in my case.

The next option is to boot to the vista installation CD by inserting the disk, restarting the computer and hitting F12 and choose boot to CD. Press any key when prompted. When prompted choose "repair my computer" and enter the command prompt.

Enter c: to get to the c-prompt as it may read x:

Enter c:\windows\winsxs

There is a file in this directory called pending.xml

To delete this file enter "del pending.xml"

Type exit to leave the command prompt and restart the computer.

This should resolve your problem!

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