Stuck Configuring 3 of 3 on Windows Vista, 7, 2008 and similar OS

If your Vista/7/2008 machine gets stuck installing/configuring update 3 of 3 after a recent update cycle, you can follow this procedure, but ONLY as a last resort. BEWARE: this may leave your machine in an unstable state. to read about why this occurs, check the following link: The Windows Servicing Guy

  1. Boot to safe mode, if at all possible.
  2. Click on Start
  3. Find the command prompt in the start menu and right click on it
  4. Choose “Run as administrator”
  5. Type takeown /f C:\Windows\winsxs\pending.xml
  6. Type cacls C:\Windows\winsxs\pending.xml /G :F
  7. Type ren C:\Windows\winsxs\pending.xml

Correcting or Fixing a Corrupt User Profile in Windows 7

  1. Restart your computer. This releases any locks Windows may have on the profile folders.
  2. Log on with an account with administrative priviledges.
  3. Move C:\Users\%username% to a safe location (%username% being the account that has the corrupt profile)
  4. Delete C:\Users\TEMP, if it exists.
  5. Delete the profile registry key from:
    1. “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList”
    2. You can confirm you’re choosing the right registry key by checking the value “ProfileImagePath” to make sure you pick the right profile.
  6. Reboot the computer and log in as the “broken” user to make Windows recreate the profile automatically.
  7. Restore any documents, favorites, desktop, files, etc. from the original profile folder you moved in the third step.

Happy new year.

And so 2011 comes to a close. Many neat things have happened and we’ve lost many important people this year.

Let us take count of what we have and what’s to come.

Happy 2012 everyone. 365 to go.