Windows 7 - "Preparing to configure windows" Message EVERY time I boot up

Hi all.

Every time I boot up my computer (Windows 7 home premium 64-bit), I get the message that says "Preparing to configure windows", right after this, I get the "Configuring windows updates" message where it shows the progress from 0-100% before it loads windows 7. This has been happening all day today. I have never seen it happen more than once. Nothing is wrong with my computer that I can tell, this is just a nuisance because it pretty much doubles my startup time! I am familiar with the windows update process and I understand that from time to time windows will automatically install updates when you boot up after downloading updates. Why is it now showing this every time I start up, and what can I do to fix it? I really appreciate any suggestions and help!

Ps. When I try to search for updates thru windows 7, it takes a log time and then I get an error code 0x80040154 I do not know if this is related to what I'm experiencing, but I assume so.

Cheers,

Russ

I believe you can beat this by deleting the pending.xml file located @ C:\Windows\winsxs\pending.xml

I've only done that on vista not win 7 so you may want to back up the file to another location before removing it. Just in case.

I just updated my post to include the error code I get when I try to run windows update. Here it is: 0x80040154

The error code represents a problem in your registry, actually kind of a rare thing in win 7. It's the "Class not registered" code. Hopefully someone else has a fix for you. Short of running a system restore I can't think of anything off the top of my head.

Maguscreed : would a sfc /scannow do any good in this situation?

Regards,
Golden

Could the problem in my registry have anything to do with the fact that I clean my registry with ccleaner about once a week? Maybe this week, it created this registry issue?

It is possible I've actually quit using ccleaner's registry feature because it kept killing the nvidia drivers on my other machine. If you used the backup feature in it you should be able to reapply the changes from the .reg file it created in your user folder.


...and sfc only checks core file integrity it doesn't affect the registry.

How do I restore from a previous registry file? I know what folder all the backups are in, I just don't know where to go from there. Thanks for your help!

you should be able to just right click the reg file and choose merge.
It will prompt with "are you sure" or something to that basic effect.
Or are you talking about the system backups?
because it would be just as easy to use system restore in that scenario.

I will try to merge with the registry backup and if that doesn't work, I'll do a system restore. I'll post tomorrow to let you know if it worked.