My computer running Windows 7 indicated that new updates were available and proceeded to install these when I shutdown the computer. However, the next day when I started the computer it got stuck at the screen saying “Preparing to configure Windows. Please do not turn off your computer”. Since I could not proceed past this point I had to start Windows in Safe Mode and complete a System Restore. This successfully restored the computer to a working state, but the next time I shutdown and then started the computer Windows kicked off the same update, again getting stuck at the “Preparing to configure Windows” screen. What are my options for avoiding this problem? Should I backup all of my data and reinstall Windows?

When researching your problem it seems that quite a few other users have experienced this issue with Windows 7. The big question is how long did you wait at the “Preparing to configure Windows” screen before concluding that it had gotten stuck and proceeded to restore the computer through Safe Mode? While this screen should usually only take a few moments some users have reported that it can take hours. In fact, one particular user left their computer running overnight at the screen and found that in the morning it had completed. Obviously this is not the length of time that it should take to apply the updates, but for one reason or another, certain computers seem to experience a significant lag in this respect. This could be for any number of reasons, such as particular software being installed on the computer or perhaps even particular models of hardware within the computer. In any case, I would suggest that you apply the update and then leave your computer on overnight to see whether it has successfully finished by the morning.

If the “Preparing to configure Windows” screen is still displayed in the morning then you can probably conclude it won’t be proceeding any further, and at this point go into Safe Mode and complete a system restoration to a working version. At this point while you could try a reinstallation of Windows I am doubtful as to whether that will help, simply because your computer already seems to be quite new. The most useful information that we can gain at this point is which particular update is causing the problem, since that will hopefully give us some more information to pursue when attempting to track down the root cause and a potential fix, for the problem. In order to do this we need to disable automatic update downloading and installing, otherwise Windows will just continue to automatically install the problematic update causing the computer to get stuck. Go to the Start menu > “Control Panel”. Click the “System and Security” control panel category and then click the “Windows Update” heading. This should indicate that you have updates available for your computer – the problematic update, plus any other updates which install at the same time but also get reverted each time due to the system restoration. Click the “Change settings” option on the left and under the “Important updates” heading change the setting to “Download updates but let me choose whether to install them” or “Check for updates but let me choose whether to download and install them”. Click OK to save the changes. Now Windows will not automatically install the updates, but will instead wait for the user to initiate the installation. Just keep this in mind, since you will now need to manually tell Windows that you would like to install any available updates rather than this happening automatically (as would have occurred in the past). That said, Windows will still notify you that updates are available which will give you some prompting about this aspect.

Now that we can selectively tell Windows when to install updates we need to look at which updates are available to install at the moment. Back on the main Windows Update screen there should be a notification regarding updates being available for your computer. It is likely that the update causing the problem is an “important” update rather than an “optional” update, so click the “X important updates are available” link on the Windows Update screen. This will show another window with the available updates, and those which should be installed are ticked. It is likely that one of those ticked updates is causing the problem. If there is only one update ticked then it makes the process of elimination easier, since it is a fair bet that’s the update causing the problem. Just to be sure, click the “Optional” tab to show all the optional updates which are available. Assuming none of the optional updates are ticked then that single update on the “Important” tab seems to be the culprit. In this case, untick that update (so that it does not install during future update installations) and then note down the reference number of the update. This is in the format KB and can be found by selecting the update and then looking in the right-hand information pane. I will explain how to use this information later on, but it is very important that you keep track of the reference numbers as they are how we will uniquely identify the different updates (which is needed for our future troubleshooting procedures).

However, before we move onto the investigation stage we need to cover the more likely scenario where there are many updates available and ticked. This makes the process of finding the problematic update much more difficult. As you may have read in previous columns, in such situations we need to use a process of elimination to find the particular update causing the problem. Note down all the updates which are currently ticked (you can probably just write down their KB reference numbers) and then untick all the updates. You can do this quickly by clicking the checkbox in the table heading – the first click will enable all the updates (i.e. get all the checkboxes in the table into a consistent “enabled” state) and then a second click will disable all the updates. Now, enable one of the updates (that was previously enabled). Write or denote down the KB reference number of that update (because if it is the problematic update, we need that information) then click the OK button. Back on the main Windows Update screen it should say “1 important update selected”. Click the “Install updates” button to then install the update. Once it has installed, and the computer is restarted, you will soon be able to tell whether that update is causing the problem depending on whether the computer gets stuck at the “Preparing to configure Windows” screen.

While the aforementioned procedure is methodical, there is one potential issue – it can be very time consuming. It is likely that your computer has not been updated for quite a while, simply because you have not been able to successfully apply the update packages. Therefore, you could have literally hundreds of important updates listed that need to be installed. While you could do the previous procedure for each individual update, that is going to take a very long time! In this situation you may instead wish to use a divide-and-conquer approach, which would also be perfectly valid for our troubleshooting. You essentially follow the same procedure, but instead of disabling all updates, and then re-enabling one, you would instead (on the first iteration of the procedure), disable half the updates and keep the other half enabled. If the problem does not occur then you know the problematic update is not in that half of the updates, plus you have successfully applied half the updates and reduced the problematic update candidate pool by 50%. In contrast, if the problem does occur then the problematic update is located in that half. On the second iteration you would then repeat the same procedure on the set of updates you know contains the problematic update. You would continue this procedure until you have narrowed the field down to the particular update causing the problem.

Of course, the above procedures make the assumption that one specific update is causing the problem, as opposed to multiple updates. Therefore, if you start to get strange results (such as the problem occurring when different updates are enabled) then you should consider the possibility that several updates (or a combination of updates) could be the catalyst for this problem. We won’t go into dealing with this scenario in-depth, as you should be able to adjust the previous procedure we have described to suit this particular situation, but it is worthwhile keeping this possibility in mind.

Once you have found the update (or updates) which cause the problem make sure that those are left disabled (unticked) in the Windows Update selection window, so that they are not installed in the future when new updates become available. While not installing the updates is a workaround, it is not a particularly acceptable solution since those updates could be rather important (given that quite a large amount of the important updates are security updates, essential to ensure that your installation of Windows remains secure). So we should conduct some further research into the updates and whether a fix is available. As you have seen, each update has a reference number in the form of KB… This makes it relatively easy to find out information about the update, since each reference number is unique to the particular update. As a starting point I would recommend that you search Google for the reference number together with “Preparing to configure Windows” or other key terms such as “problem” or “won’t install” as hopefully this will show results relating to this update and problems with installation. You could also try just searching for the reference number without any other terms, as if there is a widespread problem then it is likely web pages relating to problems with the update will appear near the top of the results.

Hopefully some useful information should be returned from your research about ways to apply the updates without encountering the problem. If you are unable to find anything useful then please feel free to contact me again with information about the identified update causing the problem and I will try to find some more information.