"Preparing To Configure Windows. Please Do Not Turn Off Your Computer"

Hi. I just got my new laptop yesterday with Windows 7 Home Premium. When I left for school this morning, I shut down my computer and saw that it had 22 Windows Updates to download. When I turned it back on this afternoon, it was stuck at a screen that said "Preparing To Configure Windows. Please Do Not Turn Off Your Computer." I decided to wait but it stayed the same for as long as I waited. Finally, I powered it off by holding on the power button, and just normally booted the system. Will there be any damage done to my new laptop? Is there any way I can prevent this update glitch from happening again? Thanks.

Hi , ive got the same notification on my desktop , after downloading three updates, boot time used to be quicker than xp but it now takes four to five minutes before I can use it, a real pain , also on shut down it says " Installing updates 1 of 3 " , been doing this for a week, each time I boot up or shut down, am running out of patience , I would have thought windows would have fixed  it by now.Is there a fix?, thanks.

Same ____ just happened to my computer. I have a desktop that is a month and a half old. I didn't have 20 updates like these guys had I had 5 that I was waiting to install. Went to bed last night and decided to install them and boom woke up this morning about 8 hours later and its still configuring. This is totally annoying. Sure simply making a restore disk would help me get back to the original configuration but what if I reset it and it screws something up? Some people are saying its just taking them 8 hours. Why the ____ is there not a bar that shows me the process and how close to finishing the update I am.

Hi All,

I'm sorry to hear that you're having trouble getting updates to install correctly. Try the steps below to see if they resolve the issue:

• If you have a Windows 7 disk, make sure your computer is set to boot from the CD drive before booting from the hard drive, insert the disk and reboot.
• Once you boot with the Vista media, select the Repair your computer option and then run the Startup Repair first
• If that doesn't correct the issue, boot with the Windows 7 media and select the System Restore option and pick a date prior to the update install

Hope this helps!

Cody C

Microsoft Answers Support Engineer

Visit our Microsoft Answers Feedback Forum and let us know what you think.

@Cody,

Read the posts - it's not Vista, it's W7 that's the problem.

Very annoying - min has now been hung at "Preparing to configure ..." for 8 hours.

And why "Preparing to configure" when does it start actually configuring?  Does it need internet acess (which it has) during the preparing to configure stage - or can I actually go on holiday today with this laptop!

Please provide a basic explanation of what the computer is doing, whether the animated cursor is enough to indicate that the process is still going (given the utterly baffling lack of progress indication - what were Microsoft thinking!), and whether a hard reset would take it completely back to pre-update state, or partially updated but working, or broken.

IMO some tech guys need to actually earn their money here, there must be some way you can investigate this very specific problem and not just give stock replies.

UPDATE

OK, at 10 hours I finally lost patience. Hard reset ... asked it to start normally ... laptop went straight to the "Preparing to configure ..." screen - however lasted only a few seconds, then "Updating Windows ... " and (hey!) - a progress indicator. Eleven updates then applied in a few seconds. And all is now well. Lucky?

So - in my case the update process had actually hung - the animated cursor does not indicate that anything is actually happening. Given the speed, it looks as if some of the updates had been applied (in the background) and these were not undone by a hard reset. YMMV!