If waiting over a year for the first service pack for Vista isn’t bad enough, now Microsoft is dealing with endless reboot loops with computers after a recent Windows Update designed to prepare systems for SP1. Microsoft quickly removed this update from Windows Update, although they are still trying to figure out how to fix the boot problems of users affected by it.

Update KB937287, described as a prerequisite to Vista Service Pack 1, was meant to fix a problem with Vista’s installation software.

The Microsoft support forums show some of the trouble this is causing:

My install of the SP1 RC Refesh has gone wrong.
Everytime I start the computer it says:
Configurating updates: stage 3 of 3 - 0% complete
And then reboots, and reboots, and reboots … I had it rebooting for over an hour before I stopped the madness.

This same user later states:

I found a brute force solution to my problem.

I yanked the power coord when it said ”do not turn off your computer”. That resulted in a trashed filesystem - it wouldn’t even boot (they weren’t kidding).

I put the disk in another computer running XP, there I ran chkdisk which fixed the filesystem (took 2 hours).

When I put the disk back it booted into vista with no mention of the ‘configurating updates’. But now I’m not sure if I dare try windows update again …

Doesn’t that sound familiar…afraid to run Windows Update. Been there, done that.

And people wonder why I switched to Apple.