Windows XP won't restart, sticks at "Updates are being installed"

[Guest]

I am getting the same after a windows update done automatically online,
surely this is a wandows fault? I have not installed anything new on my PC,
left it all night last night to get the same message this morning, did you
get an answer??

Paul

 

[Raed Sawalha]

XP Pro OEM SP2 on a Sony VAIO

On a Remote system controlled by pcanywhere

Made a system restore point
Installed Sony web site updates for
Audio drivers
Mouse Drivers
DVD Firmware upgrade
Restarted and it got stuck saying
"Updates are being installed 1 of 2" or similar
"Do not switch off your computer"

After a long time waiting, I sighed, got someone local to switch off &
switch on and logged on ok,
tried to restart.
Same problem.

Switch off, switch on, log on ok, restored the restore point
it said it was OK, I tried to restart and again
stuck at "updates are being installed"

Sony say it might be hardware fault or OS corruption so use their
system recovery disk to go back to square 1 , which is not very helpful.

Microsoft say they want £185 + taxes yes that is over $300 for a technician
to
discuss anything on OEM XP Pro

How do I recover this?

I don't want to do a repair install or upgrade install if I can help it as
the machine is
in another country and set up manager unattended repair install is not
possible and upgrade install is
tricky to get right first time I imagine.

I would just like to delete some registry keys or whatever which are telling
XP to do these updates at shut down time.
Then roll back the drivers I would imagine.
Don't see any earlier firmware version for the DVD on the web site so if
that is the problem, it will be tough.

I have a recent tape backup, but when the backup is restored with System
State,
will it overwrite the problem immediately, or after it restarts? In other
words will I still
be stuck trying to close down? If so what happens if I switch off and on at
that point?


PS The registry key for system restore says the last restore was
interrrupted
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\SystemRestore
RestoreStatus=2

Also somewhere along the way using remote registry editing from another PC I
deleted a key in

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Runonce
"*Restore"="C:\\WINDOWS\\system32\\restore\\rstrui.exe -i"
To get out of a loop and back in to some control.

 

[Doug]

Same here, and at one of my clients.
Both Dell computers. I had to power off, disconnect network cable,
disable automatic updates, then reconnect and run it manually.

 

[km]

I'm support for 400+ med students with laptops and we just started
getting everyone over to SP2 and now I'm seeing this "instaling 1 of
2..." issue. I'm also seeing it on desktops in our offices--brand new
unit, hd, xp install. So I don't think it's related to prgms or
manufacturer; it's MS.

Just got off of chat with MS tech who told me he couldn't tell me what
the error code I got for the failed install meant because they were
updating their database. Also suggested I try again in safemode--guess
what?

The error code is 80246005 and shows up nowhere on the MS site.

I've had mixed success with manually shutting down the machines and
then manually going to the update site and installing updates
one-by-one. I do have one unit running XPHome which would not install
updates until I UNinstalled SP2, then it worked perfectly.

km

 

[shakey]

Over 500 hits on google for your error code .
google 80246005
SG

 

[Marvin the Paranoid Android]

Power cycle the computer. When you log back in, hit WindowsUpdate and
install the updates manually. I'm guessing it's that stupid GDI+ update
that's sitting around waiting for you to see the information it's
displaying. Bummer that it forgot that it locked you out of the console...

 

[km]

Actually went on chat with MS tech who suggested I try it in safemode
(didn't work) and told me he couldn't tell me about the error code
because they were updating the tech database and he couldn't look it
up (10am on a Fri, really?). Follow-up emails from MS told me to go
specifically dwnld the Media Player update and insinuated that it was
a connectivity problem, all the while asking if we could consider the
matter "resolved".

Here's the kicker, all the machines I had with the problem have
mysteriously healed themselves. A co-worker noticed that the MS update
site now shows "v5" in the address where we were hitting "v4"
previously. Hmmmmmmmmm...

 

[sschale]

I'm having the same problem installing SP2. It apparently hung for
about 6 hours, so I (dumbly) tried a power down. Sure enough, it
stalled during the power down indicating "Updates are being
installed(1 of 1)", plus the "don't unplug or turn off power" message.
I just let the darned thing sit there, because every 30 seconds the
hard drive would come on for about 1/2 second, and do some quick
flashes in between.

My concern was that I've loaded up the C drive, and have only about a
gig left on a 15 gig partition. During SP2 install, I got low disk
space alerts (and did some disk cleanup) several times, as it got
below 200 meg.

Well. About 36 hours the thing finally powered off; I assumed it
completed.

Encouraged, I went on, rebooted and a day later got a notice that
there were new updates to beinstalled. Confident everything was all
ok then, I said to go ahead and install them. That was 24 hours ago,
and it's still sitting in a power down sequence telling me the same
old message, except NOW it's installing one of TWO!!!

I think (hopefully) the story here is that something causes the
process to become very slow, but perhaps it will always eventually
complete. I just hope this isn't a permanent affliction -- that 's
going to be a bummer from here on.

Has anybody ever proposed forming an ad hoc "common problem" group
when stuff like this happens, promise to share the expenses and
appoint one person to interact with MS at their outrageous prices (to
beg them to fix their *&(##$&$**! product), to obtain a fix, and then
share it with the group, all of us sharing the expense of the techical
support? I don't know how to organize such a thing, but I can't see
how MS could complain. But there are a lot of us working a starving
sole proprietors, outside a corporate environment, and this stuff is
devastating enough on loss of productivity, but having to pay MS to
get out of this misery adds insult to injury.