I ran a couple Server 2008 R2 Windows Updates last night and found it took forever to boot and was showing 'Applying update operation XXXX of XXXX' against a black screen. Anyone know what causes this, or what update is causing this? The servers are virtualized with qemu-kvm.

Hi ITFreedom, Do you know what updates that you’ve just installed? Here’re my suggestions. Please try the methods below in order. Method 1: Use Windows server 2008 installation media perform a startup repair and rename the pending.xml file. The pending.xml file stores information of failed updates. To do so, please follow the steps below: 1) Insert Windows server 2008 media and restart the computer from CD/DVD. 2) Choose the language. Then in the bottom left of the installation windows, click Repair the computer. 3) Choose CMD prompt to repair the computer. 4) Enter the following command to rename pending.xml file. takeown /f C:\Windows\winsxs\pending.xml cacls C:\Windows\winsxs\pending.xml /G <EnterUsernameHere>:F ren C:\Windows\winsxs\pending.xml C:\Windows\winsxs\pending.old 5) Restart the computer and run Windows update again. Method 2: Perform a clean boot and install the updates again. A clean boot helps eliminate software conflicts. 1) Restart the computer and press F8 to boot into Safe Mode. 2) Click Start, type msconfig in the Start Search box, and then press ENTER. If you are prompted for an administrator password or for a confirmation, type the password, or click Continue. 3) On the General tab, click Selective Startup. 4) Under Selective Startup, click to clear the Load Startup Items check box. 5) Click the Services tab, click to select the Hide All Microsoft Services check box, and then click Disable All. 6) Click OK. 7) When you are prompted, click Restart. 8) After the computer starts, start Windows Update to reapply the updates. Please also disable the anti-virus software in case of any failures. After you have applied the updates successfully, follow these steps to reset the computer to start as usual: a) Click Start, type msconfig.exe in the Start Search box, and then press ENTER. If you are prompted for an administrator password or for confirmation, type your password, or click Continue. b) On the General tab, click the Normal Startup option, and then click OK. c) When you are prompted to restart the computer, click Restart. Method 3: If the methods above won’t work, I’m afraid you will have to perform an in-place upgrade. To perform an in-place upgrade of Windows Server 2008, follow these steps: 1) Insert the Windows Server 2008 installation CD/DVD; double click to run the Setup from CD/DVD. 2) Choose the language and click Install Now. 3) Accept the License Agreement and Choose Upgrade. 4) Select the same edition of Windows Server 2008 that is installed on server. (Please make sure you have enough space in your System drive.) Regards, Karen Ji This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. On July 1st we will be making this forum read only. After receiving a lot of feedback from the community, it was decided that this forum is a duplication and therefore redundant of the General Forum. So, until July 1st, we will start asking customers to redirect their questions to the General Forum. On June 11th, CSS engineers will move any new threads to the General Forum. Please post a reply to the announcement thread if you have any feedback on this decision or the process. You can also email WSSDComm@microsoft.com.

Hi Karen, Thanks for the reply. There was no error, all of the updates installed. I was merely trying to figure out if this is supposed to be doing this or not. I've never seen Windows Updates take this long, and I've never seen this DOS style screen that says "Applying update operation....". In preperation for updating 20 or so servers, I was trying to guage if this is normal behavior, or if there was something that can be done to mitigate it. It appears it is one of the latest updates, I updated my W7 Pro workstation and it did this, but it went really quickly. Thanks.

Hi ITFreedom, Glad that your problem is finally solved. The reason why the Windows Update took so long time to finish is that Windows needs to check every component and verify that things don't break. And some updates may contain a lot of detailed files. Maybe sometimes it just takes time and require our patience. :-) Regards, Karen Ji This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.