Win7Pro SP1 32bit - Endless loop: "Failure to configure updates / shutting down"
Greetings
I am hoping I can find a solution to this matter below by tapping into the experts in this community.
I have tried and read a lot of stuff within the restrictions of a busy professional and family life and have got now to the end.
I have no more ideas of what to try and hopefully someone here can throw me a life saver.
(I apologize if this post is a bit too long, please provide feedback on this too, thank you)
Problem
A Win7Pro SP1 32bit laptop with a 2 year old 240 GB SSD had been working quite well until May 15 when 2x Windows updates were installed (KB3153199 and KB3156013) and shutdown did not happen normally.
Now it will not let me log on to the system. With every boot it brings up a "Failure configuring updates, reverting changes" screen, followed 3 hours later by a "shutting down" screen that never completes the job.
It's a infinite/endless loop.
History of events / what I have done / observations
After that update session, when I went to shut down, it did not do so as gracefully as usual. The system brought up a message with words to the effect of "X program still needs to close" and asking if I wanted to force-close it, which I did.
The system then attempted to shut down, and from there on this is what happened (I will put in bullet point form in an attempt to be clear and concise):
- It went into 'shutting down' screen or "configuring updates, etc". I honestly don't remember which, but it stayed there for about 1 hour at which point I force-shut via power button.
- Upon turning on it brought up boot options screen that states 'the computer shut down incorrectly' (or something like that) and the options of choosing different safe modes or booting normally.
- Booting normally brought up a screen "Preparing/configuring desktop" and lingered there for a while, then "Failure to configure updates. Reverting changes. Do not turn off"... and it stayed there again for an awfully long time.
- So then another force-shut via power button and then I tried to boot into safe mode. That came up with a screen also saying "Failure to configure updates" and would not move past that.
- After that I tried several times to get into all the 3x safe mode options and they would all present the "Failure configuring..." screen. I would always force-shut via power button.
- Then I thought to let it go for as long as it would take and see if it was just an issue of letting it complete the 'reverting' process.
- So I booted normally (no safe mode), the "Failure configuring... " came up again and this time I let it go to see what would happen. I left it overnight and by the morning it said "Shutting down".
- I left it in "shutting down" mode for just over 2 days (about 50 hours) as I had left for a trip.
- On my return it still said "shutting down" and so I turned it off via power button again. I assumed this meant it would never really turn off so something else had to be tried
- I then proceeded to use a recovery-repair-diagnostic DVD that I created when it was bought. It is a Fujitsu proprietary recovery thing.
- I ran the disk's diagnostics for HDD, RAM, etc and results were all fine.
- I ran the boot fix diagnostics and that also didn't find any problems. (Interestingly, there is no option to access a cmd prompt as I would have run chkdsk and sfc)
- Then I went for a restore previous configuration and... surprise! NO restore points found!!. BIG disappointment here as I know for a fact that I had created some. How did they get wiped out?
- (I eventually ran the antivirus on that disk when I pulled it out for testing. Admittedly I used MS Security Essentials, but all fine... I can run something more powerful if people believe that may help)
- In the end I only had the option of wiping out the disk and recover from the recovery partition and return everything to factory install, which would be my last resort so I didn't do that.
Unfortunately I did not have a backup/clone of the disk from which I could restore a copy. I do so for the desktop computer, but not for this laptop which is my daughter's (another lesson learnt).
After this I pulled out the SSD, hooked it up to my desktop computer,
1) cloned all SSD partitions to another drive and
2) ran chkdsk on it. The latter did not find any errors.
I tried running SFC /scannow in offline mode and that did not work. It came up with some error message that I can't remember.
More attempts to log into the system and able to, but with limitations
After this I have tried many times to get into the system using Safe Mode and the only thing that has worked is this sequence of attempts:
- I boot into 'Safe Mode with Command Prompt'
- It gives me the "Failure configuring..." and I let it be until the "shutting down" screen. This takes 3 hours (I have it timed now).
- Then I have to leave it in this "shutting down" mode for another 2-3 hours before I force-close via power button.
- Then I leave it off for about 30 seconds, boot again and select 'Safe Mode with command prompt' and then it presents me a logon screen (it took me so many days to find this out!)
- I log in as administrator and proceeded to try different things:
- The first thing was to do a sfc /scannow and that went ahead well and no problems detected.
- A chkdsk did not proceed. It actually froze my cmd prompt and I had to kill it by opening the task manager using ctrl + alt + del. I then opened another cmd prompt
- I tried to uninstall the KB updates using wusa command but that was met with some error.
- I 'investigoogled' for a solution to this and changed some registry setting to enable uninstalling in safe mode. I also started the Trustedinstaller.exe service as part of the solution
- Then the wusa uninstall seemed to get started, the windows update standalone installer came up "Do you want to uninstall.... KB... bla bla",
- Clicking 'yes' then brought up a progress bar window with the message "uninstalling" and nothing would happen, it would just not do anything. I left this for a day and then I killed the process.
- I came across mention of the SFCFix utility, I downloaded to the desktop, copied to usb pendrive and took it across to run it on the laptop
- After running, the SUMMARY of results listed 0 counts of corruption and no fixes required/done. Also "No corruptions have been detected on this computer"
- I also ran MicrosoftFixit50123, which went ahead fine, but after still can't uninstall KB updates
- I ran WindowsUpdateDiagnostic and that comes up with "An error occured while troubleshooting" and the error details states
- Package ID and Path 'unknown'
- Error code: 0x80300113
Other attempts
I have tried other things, like getting rid of some files from WinSxS folder, also from FolderDistribution (actually copying them elsewhere), but to no avail.
I have returned files to their original folders after restarting and seeing that things have not changed and having to go again through the arduous process to log back in.
I have got to the end of the line now and don't know what else to try.
I don't want to turn it off because it will then take ages to go through all the process of getting back into safe mode with cmd prompt, so it's been on for almost a week now.
I haven't done anything in regards to the
CBS folder.
I have checked other threads for update/boot problems here on sysnative but have failed to see a pathway to try for my problem (maybe my brain's fried).
I am looking at the prospect of a factory restore now if nothing else can be tried (at least I have that, but it is the 2nd worst solution, the 1st being not having anything at all to fall back to)
I am feeling actually worse for my daughter as she will loose her installed programs and stuff that will take a lot of effort to put back and will not quite be the same :-|
But I am not throwing the towel as long as there is stuff to try out.
If anyone here can help me out I will be very grateful for this.
Thank you for your assistance.
