This was a bit of a strange one. A client had an HP Pavilion dv6000 laptop that was stuck on “Configuring Updates: 3 of 3.” The the laptop would reboot automatically and configure update 3 of 3 again.
Normally I would use the Vista Recovery disk but it would just boot to a blank screen. I would get to the Vista loading bar but then the optical drive would stop spinning and the screen would go blank. I tried multiple boot disk finally getting Ubuntu’s live CD to boot. In retrospect I wish I had tried an XP disk to get to the recovery console.
To stop the configuring update loop, I deleted the pending.xml file under c:\windows\winsxs folder. Details on that procedure can be found over at The Fake Geek. Initially it looked like it was going to do the loop again but it went past that to let me log in.
Once I was in, I noticed that Windows Updates wouldn’t run (Could not search updates). I tried a variety of solutions that existed on the net however in the end SP1 saved me. I had to enable a bunch of services that had been set to manual for some reason, including the Windows Installer. Then I installed SP1 using the standalone download.
That was all. SP1 fixed all the services and Windows Updates. I never did figure out why so many boot CDs go to a blank screen. One Linux distro had problems with the graphics card. Which lends me to think it might be a video card firmware issue but Linux distros often have problems with graphics cards.