I'm trying to help a nephew with his notebook. It will not boot. A screen comes on saying (Configuring Updates:Stage 3 of 3-0% Complete) Then nothing happens. It goes to a blank screen then starts over and does the same thing. I tried going into safe mode but it does the same thing. It has Vista Home Premium and he doesn't have a disk.
It's a common issue of an infinite loop during Microsoft update. There are tons of posts related to this issue online. So my best suggestion is to use Google search. I'm not suggesting directly a solution because there is no global solution. Various things worked differently on various machines and various solutions have worked for some and did nothing for others. In general, best thing to do is to bring your pc back to the state before the problematic update.
Being a Dell, it has an option to format the disk and reinstall the system to delivery state. So it is back to the way it was at day 1. Of course he lost everything. I believe the problem was that he had the HD almost full.
well what i did in my brother case which is same ........is that i use linux live cd ubuntu and backup his entire data excluding .exe.......types on external hardisk and format and reinstall to factory setting (day 1 setting ) after that tweaking and installing new antivirus ..scanning your data .....etc i restore the data back. or you can scan the data with linux antivirus live cd's (kaspersky,fsecure many other vendors) then transfer data from it to external drive and format pc to day 1st then restore data back(ie cut paste files back) please note down loop error also occur due to ram issue as well i seen that problem as well where system go to specific stage and reboot same happen in safe mode so you can also try removing one ram at time and booting the system. or it may have any other hardware or software issue as well my recommendation is scan your pc with live antivirus cd's and back up important files and check with different possibilities like NoIos said one will work for you i am pretty sure from live cd like ubuntu you can connect to net and backup your data online as well (i mean important files)
From here forward, may I respectfully suggest use of disk-imaging (to an external drive) with regularity!
WilliamP, if system restore was enabled you can restore your computer to a time before this problematic update. You will need a Vista installation disk, since you do not have it, I suggest you look for a way to getting the Microsoft recovery environment (present on the installation disk) which will allow you to boot from the disk and restore the system using system restore. You will not lose any data this way. See if you can borrow a Vista installation disk from a friend for this purpose.
