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

There were many solutions told in this forum which worked for many. I am listing it out and will mention what I found in my Dell Inspiron i5 4GB RAM Win-7 Pro-x64 laptop

1. Waiting:

I faced this problem on Oct 14, 2010 and opted for a recovery as nothing happened even after waiting for 4 hours. I again tried to install the updates and after waiting for 7 hours opted for a Recovery because "this is not the only thing I do".

2. Put off by holding on the Power button and booted back normally.

This worked first time for me. But as the flurry of the updates happened after and after, this is no more a solution.

3. System Restore.

I kept on doing this. But even after keeping the Win 7 updates manually in the Control Panel > Windows Updates > Settings, some of them kept on downloaded and installed brought the problem back.

4. Installing Updates manually.

I do not know whether this works. But I have around 40+ updates waiting. How the ____ I will be able to manually install them? Oh Jeez......

5. Disable McAfee.

I do have McAfee installed from AT&T (AT&T is another ____ like MS where reaching out to US President is a better option than a customer support person). I am not yet done with this because of "Please do not switch off...." window. But the other folks who complained about the same issue has not mentioned about this. I am disabling McAfee and trying to install the updates hoping that something would happen. Please pray for me and my computer to get it booted and allow me to start working. 

Folks, if I missed anything please add up. 

With lot of regrets,

A Windows 7 Professional Customer

Another solution is to leave your computer sleeping quietly into a closet and wait for the upcoming service pack if you don't really want to bang your heads with the "preparing to configure" hanging screen and reinstall Windows 7 so many times. In the meantime, switch to Mac OS X, Linux or previous versions of Windows (Vista and XP) if Microsoft continues to refuse to fix the behavior and insists for unefficient solutions that not work. I've tried the sfc/ scannow workaround; none worked. This is not a KB974431 issue but a general problem with the Windows 7 Software Feature Installer Service which not allows installing more than 345 software updates and up.

EDIT: I've installed MSU packages manually using the silent installation method (wusa windows6.1-Kbxxxxxx.x64.MSU /quiet /norestart). Microsoft Update configured the OS successfully. I've created a batch file containing a couple of wusa /quiet /norestart command lines closed by "shutdown -r -t 0". This workaround worked just fine.

My computer, an HP Pavilion, froze on me with 74 updates to configure. After seeing it hung up at the 7th one and thinking that it must have been a mistake (how could there be that many!?) I did a hard shut down. The next day, yesterday when I went to turn it off I still had 74 updates showing and it was stuck at #10. Again I had to do a hard shutdown because of a severe thunderstorm. Right now I am making the backup disks that I hadn't gotten around to making and then I am going to try shutting the thing down again and going to bed.

I have reset my updates to download but not to automatically install from now on. But that isn't helping right now. And I haven't been able to find where the waiting updates are. I have searched my computer and online in the help pages for the answer and this is the closest I have gotten. I did find the list of the ones that successfully downloaded and installed.

Does anyone know where I can find the list of what is waiting to install? Maybe there is something I can do to change it or divide it or something.

Thanks!

Hey somebody....I've had my new computer (Win7 Premium 64 bit) for about a month and within a week, I started getting the**"Preparing to configure windows"** message when shutting down or restarting.  Even when logged on, all programs were slow to load. I thought maybe it was a virus but it wasn't.  I've been searching for the answer on the internet ever since.  It wasn't until I opened the task manager to find out what was slowing my computer down that I noticed theWindows Media Player Network Sharing Service was using up all of the physical memory.  This was not good.  I did some research which led me to disabling the service which I'm sure I don't need.  I rebooted my computer and everything was running as it was the first day I turned it on.  I then tried a normal shutdown and a normal restart and it was like the first day also. I think this may have been the culprit that was slowing my PC down.  This may not be the answer for you but it sure worked for me.  If it does work for you, do like I did, share this information.