My windows 7 laptop has been stuck on "Installing update 4 of 9" for over an hour. What should I do.?
Obviously it tells me not to power off my machine and the last thing I want to do is corrupt my OS. Any advice from someone in the know would be appreciated...
2012-10-19T06:16:51Z
I have not tried turning it off and on again as my question says, windows is advising me not to. I've had windows based systems for about 15 years and this has never occurred before...
Brandon2012-10-19T06:24:43Z
Favorite Answer
Hello,
I've had something like this happen to me before. I would wait a couple more hours. If it doesn't finish, then the only feasible option is to turn off the machine. I have done that before. It didn't damage the OS it just needed to reinstall the updates. Sometimes Windows likes to get stuck.
Though, if worst comes to worst, you could get the Windows disk from the Manufacturer. Or maybe your computer has a recovery partition.
Mine got stuck in a loop with the last update too, I asked my neighbor as he is an IT specialist. He told me to first try a warm boot to bring up the task manager and if that doesn't work shut it off. I had to shut it off but when I put it back on it was fine it had done the downloads already it just needed to do the install which is what it sounds like yours is doing.
When windows does updates it first downloads then starts the install process.
Turn it off for 30 seconds to let it totally power down then back on it should continue the instillation. If it doesn't do a restore to before you started the download, Microsoft updates create restore points before they start the update for exactly this reason.
I have found that most of the windows messages are written as an alarmist they aren't as serious as they state.