The restore point works great for those who have restore points.

Like many others, I have NO RESTORE POINTS!

Come on, MIcrosoft! Give us a more general solution!

My laptop has now been useless for 3 days and the only solution so far is to reinstall Vista (losing all installed programs, though data MAY be safe)!

you mean to say i can still have my documents back, but my installed programs will no be saved?

I'm stuck in this infinite loop due to Update 937287, and like many others I've been in contact with, there a no restore points to be found when doing a repair computer as suggested. So far the only advice to us has been to do a complete re-install...

What we need is a way to bypass the initial installation attempt in some way, either by renaming some files and/or folders, changing some registry entries, etc to get the install to fail totally and the system to continue to boot. I've seen suggestions for several things to try, but none have worked, telling me that these install files/commands are hidden away in come cache or hidden directory or something. I'd love to know where...

Anyone have any ideas?

i had same prob. you need to remove the drive, look in it with another pc, go to windows, winsxs and delete the pending.xml file. if you cant do this, you have to activate the hidden administrator account, and give yourself full access. after deleting the file, return the drive , and it should boot up.
good luck, should be ok to download the updates again.

For those who do not have Vista Media and only have the Manufacturing disk which does not help in repairing, see this thread at forums.microsoft.com posted 2/19/08 0543 Re: Vista Business keeps restarting after windows update 14/2/08 :

" On start up tap F8 until you get to the boot screen
Run the "Repair my computer" option
Enter your username and password
Run the system restore for a point in time before the update was installed and then restart after it's done
That should get you back up and running again, no rebuilds or system disks required! "

Microsoft should supply a cure for the problem for everyone, including those like me with OEM software on the computer which didn't come with a restore disk. I have not been able to use my new computer since this happened, and I think that we should all be compensated for our loss and frustration. At the very least, Microsoft should solve the problem and give us a free copy of the latest version of MS Office.

To fix this you need a Vista DVD to boot from (If not use this Vista Recovery CD Avilabale from here... http://neosmart.net/blog/2008/windows-vista-recovery-disc-download/ )

Once you have booted up with the Vista DVD / Recovery Disc

Hit Repair Options and select command prompt

Now type in

C:
cd WindowsWinSXS
del pending.xml

This should fix it.

Ok. I have used the recovery cd, I have changed to boot from the cd, but when I get to the command prompt part, it doesn't work. Any ways you can help me, or give me more information. When I enter in
C:
cd WindowsWinSXS
it tells me: The system cannot find the path specified.

I would greatly appreciate any help if you have it.

thanks, pressing f8 and doing a system restore seems to have worked, only reason we using vista is because it comes with new laptops :(

@Becca
try
cd
cd windows
cd winsxs

i didnt have to delete the pending file btw, so if you did a restore you may also not need to.

To all those who said about command prompt and deleting pending.xml thanks. My busted system is now working again.

Thanks again.

Z

After installing SP1 which failed my laptop only boots to a black screen, safe mode gets stuck on crcdisk, using Vista DVD and booting from disc system restore gets stuck on last step "finalizing file restore" startup repair always claims to fix something but I still have the same problem, memory diagnostic passed and I've ran chkdsk /r and /f and that didn't solve anything anyone have any suggestions at all, my laptop is a complete brick and I've got a lot of important files so I don't want to reinstall a new copy.

Had the same problem. Updates 3 of 3 0% complete went through endless loop. Thanks to the helpful postd, I managed to get my computer running again.

Please help!! i have done everything recommended but to no avail. I'm still stuck in the loop. My PC doesn't even detect the Recovery disc (DVD-R). it has been almost a month now that i cant use my PC and understandably i'm frustrated.

thanks in advance

Hi. Please help me.I am a pre-university student. My laptop is using both xp professional and vista. After a recent update on vista, this endless looping of configuring updates stage 3 of 3 is making me unable to complete my projects. Hope someone can give me some useful tips on how to solve this problem. Thanks.

Ok,
this is the solution that I used to resolve the "Configuring Updates Step 3 of 3 — 0% Complete" infinite reboot cycle:

(Preface: you need a "live cd" too boot into an environment from which you may delete or rename the "pending.xml" file, to do this, I used the free and open source Ubuntu Linux distribution.)

Step-by-step:

1) find a friend with a working computer, CD-Burner and blank CDROM. Visit the Ubuntu download site: http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download

2) download the desktop edition ISO
3) burn the ISO to disk (if you don't know how to do this do a bit of googling - it's beyond the scope of this fix)
4) once burnt, boot your broken Windows Vista computer, but use the appropriate key combination to change the boot settings to tell it to boot from the CDROM

5) the Ubuntu CD should offer you a language selector and then the option "Try Ubuntu without modifying your computer"

6) Ince Ubuntu has booted, go to the "Places" menu in the top menu bar.

7) Within the places menu, you'll see some "disk drives" listed, you should be able to guess which one might be the one that is your Windows Vista C Drive by it's size or name, e.g. "75.4GB disk" or "Presario" or "System" etc... it depends upon your computer.

8 ) Once you've figured out which one it is then click it (don't be scared to try each entry in turn)

9) a disk icon should then appear on the Ubuntu desktop that you can then double click and explore.

10) Confirm that it's the correct disk partition by looing for familiar folder names such as "Users", "Windows" etc.. (if not try one of the others as described in step 7)

11) navigate to the following folder: windows/winsxs

12) locate the file "pending.xml" and rename it by pressing F2 on your keyboard and editing the file name to something like "pending.xml.broken" perhaps.

13) restart the computer via the ubuntu System -> Quit... Restart options

14) remove the live cd when prompted.

15) let the machine boot up back into Windows Vista, it may go back to the "configuring updates" screen again - but don't panic - be patient. It should switch after a while to say "Welcome" and eventually take you to your normal Windows Vista desktop.

This worked for me, I hope it works for you too.
Good luck.

bytecode

Thanks bytecode for this fix. My daughter's laptop had the endless configuring update loop and we were so frustrated. You're a lifesaver!

awesome job! deleting the pending.xml file worked for me.

Hi, i deleted the pending.xml by going to 'Repair computer' (pressing F8) at reboot.

Then going to CMD to delete.

I tried rebooting, it went back to.

'Configuring Updates: 3 of 3 0 0% Complete.
Do not turn off your computer.

Then reboots after 8-10mins. Continues the loop all over again.

Please help. sigh... i have very important data for work. all my work files are in my laptop.

Tusen takk!! (Norwegian for "Thank you veary much!!")
The "command-> del pending.xml" method worked for me :)

Ok. I've tried just about all the options presented here... my father in law's computer is going through the endless loop and when I got his computer to the prompt mode, I get all the way down to del pending.xml. And then it tells me that the file I'm looking for is corrupted and can not be deleted or something like that.... His computer never came with an installation cd and I don't have a cd right now to fix this problem... any other options that anyone else can think of?

My sister's laptop has that problem, I don't want to format it yet before I find out about her Vista license. In the meantime I had to get some files from it.

When I chose 'Repair system' I can't do it because it says it's a different version. So, when i get to that window, there's a 'Load drivers' button, that shows an open file Dialog, which I used to move files to my USB (strangely, it works), so I can move the files from her laptop, at least.

I don't have the laptop at hand so I just found out about pending.xml. I'll try that out tonite.

So, I'llstick to XP for a while.

Thank you so much Wozza, even though the instructions are incorredt (there should be a backslash after windows, ex: C:WindowsWinSXS)

I had a large homework assignment (high school) due today that I had to talk my way out of because Vista freaked out on a patch, I am now at my desktop waiting for OpenOffice to start

Thanks a million!!!

Guys - go to http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949358 and follow option #3 if the restore point is not an option or not working. It works like a champ.

After delete 'pending.xml' file, reboot the pc.
Then the same screen will show up, when reach 99%, you'll see an error screen and Vista automatically will restore to previous restpre point.
That process takes around 15 to 20 minutes.
The PC will reboot itself and you'll get your Vista working fine again.
I'll advice disable the automatic updates.

BTY I'm using Linux, but always I have to repair my friends pc's, win users.
^_^