Infinite Reboot Loop? Caught in a Windows Vista Update

Troubleshooting tips for Windows Vista? This one could save you days or even weeks of frustration, money, more frustration, a useless brand new computer, and maybe even a little sanity:

• Don't set your computer to download automatic updates. Once you read the following, turn off the option for automatic downloads. Instead, set your computer to check for available Vista updates, notify you, and then wait a few days. No, make that weeks. Browse techie blogs, hang out (virtually) around the Microsoft techie water cooler, so to speak, and if no one who has your specific make and model of computer reports any problems, then pray to the gods of infinite computing mercy and download. (Incidentally, this refers only to Microsoft Windows Vista Updates. All the others are -- hopefully -- ok.)

Infinite Reboot Loop. Corrupted File Downloads. Techie Blogger Sites. These are all words I was not expecting to be using just two months after buying my shiny new Sony Vaio laptop (8/25/2008, to be exact). I got the standard three years' insurance at Best Buy (Geeks, anyone?), drove home, and was very, very happy. My shiny new Sony Vaio laptop came with Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium installed, and boy was I delighted with everything about the whole deal. Plus, and you can't get any blonde-er than this, my shiny new Sony Vaio laptop is pink; ye gods -- the ancient IBM spirits of dead monolithic hard drives are turning in their landfills at the notion, and their bland monitors -- remember those dark screens that would only show orange or green fonts, and how you had to input MS-Dos commands in exasperating shorthand: "C: dir" and "del" and every filename had to have the same number of letters? I really like Windows Vista. I like the look of the pages and the ease of access to everything I need. Sure, I thought at first that some of the changes were unnecessary cosmetic tweaking that actually hide some of the functions I was used to routinely accessing -- such as disk defragmenting -- but that's because, I discovered, everything is automated now. You don't have to ask your computer if she would mind defragmenting the c: drive anymore -- Vista takes care of that, and myriad other little housekeeping tasks, on a weekly or other regular schedule of automated functions. Automatic updates of every kind imaginable are downloaded at 3:00 a.m., so it is sure never to interfere with your happy-go-lucky lifestyle, as you Facebook your way through the evening, or even write a Hub page on the joys of gardening in the Adirondacks or snowboarding for beginners in rural Japan.

Sure, there may well have been a little pop-up balloon message in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen the first time I turned on the laptop, saying something about creating a back-up or a recovery disk or something to that effect. I didn't pay it much attention, as I didn't have any data files to back up yet, and I hadn't downloaded any software or programs that I would want to have back-up copies of yet, either.

You're all one step ahead of me, aren't you?

Yep. I didn't realize that the little pop-up balloon had what King Lear would have referred to (were he to be setting up his favorite specs on his new pink Sony Vaio laptop) as a "darker purpose." There may even also have been a small window with a darker purpose, too -- but in the frenzy of that first set up, there's always a flurry of open control panels and windows, as you delete everything AOL and install everything Google, make Mozilla Firefox your default browser and consign the old, tired Internet Explorer to a corner somewhere. You know what it's like. Some of those little control panels just get closed in all the excitement.

And thus it was, gentle reader, that I was not aware of the dark and ugly truth. There was no recovery disk included with the manual and certificate of authenticity (you know: in the neat plastic bag that has the important stuff -- such as the recovery disk -- that you carefully put away in a safe place so the cat won't sleep on it). Microsoft knows, and Sony apparently concurs, that Windows Vista Home Premium is just so darn good that recovery disks are not necessary. Any little issues or problems can be solved by other means. A full recovery of the operating system to factory settings is unthinkable -- so why bother spending money on the disks? No one is ever going to need them. A situation requiring a full operating system recovery is just never going to happen.

So they tell you to make the disks yourself.

Did I mention how much I like Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium? Because I really do like it. I spent almost two months enjoying the ease of home computing, until the dreaded downloads of 10/14/2008. Less than two months. Two little months, as Hamlet would have said, had he bought a shiny new Sony Vaio in August and cradled its addled and useless form in his arms a mere 51 days later. I was unaware of the existence of these downloads -- my beautiful pink laptop was tending to my updating needs while I slept; and so, early on the morning of Wednesday 15th of October (at 3:00 a.m.), Vista downloaded something that didn't agree with it.

When you go to the security settings on your computer and look for the option to control when and how updates are found online and made available to you for download, you will notice that it is strongly recommended by Microsoft that you keep this on "automatic." I mention this because I feel a need to point out how strongly Microsoft stands by its operating system; so much so that we should ignore all the talk of Vista being fraught with bugs and bugged with fraught customers.

Back to the early morning hours of October 15th, 2008. I awoke to something I hope none of you ever see. If you ever have seen it, you will recoil in horror at the memory when I tell you what my shiny new Sony Vaio laptop was doing. It was caught in an infinite reboot loop, and was booting up, showing a screen saying "Configuring updates 3 of 3 -- 0% complete. Do not turn off your computer." Then it would shut down, reboot, show the screen, and repeat -- until I managed to turn it off with the power button, and put it out of its misery. Now, all you tech-savvy computer whiz kids out there will nod sagely. I didn't. I cried a little. I left the computer off for a little while, then turned it on again, just in case I had imagined it, or in case shutting down would somehow jog it out of its fruitloop of futility. Nope.

"What were you doing when the computer entered the infinite reboot loop?" asked the tech-savvy computer whiz kid at the college I had retired from a mere several days before.

"Well, I was sleeping. What my computer was doing, I have no idea."

I didn't. At the time. I had no idea what pernicious consequences sleeping, in general, might have, when it comes to automatic Microsoft updates.

"Simple," he said, "we'll do a system restore to a previous point. When was the last time your computer was working normally?"

"Well, that would have been just before it -- you know -- STOPPED," I said, woebegone, then recounted the last moments of my shiny new you-know. He inserted his handy Microsoft Windows Recovery Disk ("Why don't I have one of those?" I whimpered) and restored to the previoius day's condition. Shiny.

And that would have been that, if the security settings on my laptop were not still set to the (recommended) option of automatic updates. For lo, when I was not looking, the same screen got itself firmly embedded in a sort of coma-like trance of boot -- update -- shut down -- reboot every few minutes, on my still-factory-fresh Vaio. And I was getting annoyed.

I did all the things you do when you are lucky enough to have two computers instead of just one. I went online and Googled "Windows Vista Troubleshooting Tips -- updating 3 of 3" and was surprised to find a slew of items detailing similar incidences -- all caused earlier this year, in February (the 12th, actually, at 3:00 a.m. While you were sleeping). And that Windows Service Pack 1 had similar results. I learned that the remedy was as simple as restoring your operating system to a previous point (one that wasn't in a coma) and installing a fix, such as Update for Windows Vista (KB937287).

It costs $60 to ask Microsoft a question. It doesn't matter whether you would like to ask by phone, email, Instant Message -- yuh pays yer money and yuh takes yer choice. I went to their website, located their technical support options, and decided not to ask them a question. What if I asked the wrong thing? What if I didn't know how to ask the question? Was it like the Oracle at Delphos, and answers were subject to the discretion of the gods? Instead, I decided to play dumb, and took my laptop back to Best Buy. Maybe one of the Computer Geeks there would restore my OS and install the requisite update for me.

No, none of the geeks had any knowledge or could even guess the magic number, KB937287, or even seemed to know that such a magic number existed. They told me to call Sony, which seemed counterintuitive to me, but they assured me it was the right way to go. They asked how I liked Windows Vista. Just fine, I replied, until it STOPPED WORKING. The geeks looked offended. How could I malign such a neat operating system? It's really great. IT ISN'T WORKING, I said, louder than I really should have, and then left the store. Back at my old iMac, I did some more research online (which didn't cost sixty bucks. And before you all email me -- for free -- and point out that it actually only costs $59, not $60, I'm not interested, OK? It's as near sixty bucks as makes no difference, so don't be pedantic; it isn't enough of a difference to buy half a gallon of gas), and was directed from the Microsoft Support page, by Microsoft Corporation, to tech blogs by interested folk who answer questions for free. There, I found a useful blog by a decent gent who described my problem exactly, and informed the world that Microsoft had released a download of a System Restore program file (when, you know, they didn't even have to, he pointed out, since we should all have already made our own restore and recovery disks the first time we turned Vista on) so that idiots such as myself could restore our systems to a previous point and isolate the update that had killed our computers.

I downloaded the file. I made a restore disk (note that Microsoft did not release a download of a full Recovery Kit) and I thought I'd better look at the offending updates to see if there were any I could do without. The helpful blog I had downloaded the Microsoft release from said that probably the best way to discover which of the updates was the culprit was to try each one to see which one didn't work. Seemed to make sense, as I had my trusty Microsoft release of a system restore program file to back me up.

It didn't work. Next screen I see on my Shiny? "Configuring updates 3 of 3. . . ." By now I'm angry, and it's several days later. I call Sony Corporation to ask about my Sony Vaio. A very helpful tech support guy spent a lot of time with me on the phone (for free) talking me through several options involving F2 screens and all sorts of tech-y wonders I would never have guessed possible. Unfortunately his first language was not actually English, though, and the process was slowed down considerably while I pondered whether he had phrased his questions in a manner so artfully opaque because it was the correct technical language to use in these situations and I was just too lacking in savvy to understand, or whether he simply couldn't construct intelligible questions in English. The latter turned out to be the case. This was sad, because he was a very helpful and earnest chap who sincerely wanted to help me restore my operating system. After an interminably long and painfully tortuous inquisition involving "what was showing my computer" we discovered that my operating system, on my brand new shiny, had been (gulp) corrupted by the malignant and festering download method I had used to obtain the Microsoft restore. But it was from Microsoft, I wailed. But you used something like iTorrent or LimeWire to download it, didn't you, I finally deciphered him as having said. Well hell yes, I had. How else was I supposed to access the $#@**&^ thing? WITH A SPOON?

I won't tell you which of the above-mentioned methods I employed. I will, however, point out, simply for the record, that the method I did employ was recommended by the decent gent who was, after all, giving free access to a release published by MICROSOFT and found on a website I accessed having been directed to just such a site by MICROSOFT, who seem to be aware that most folks don't like to pay sixty bucks to ask why their fifty-one-day-old laptops are NOT WORKING AT ALL, NOHOW.

What I needed to do now was to insert the Recovery disk and perform a complete restore to factory settings. That would be the recovery disk that was not included with purchase of the computer, would it not?, I inquired, and was promptly put through to someone from whom I could order the requisite piece of plastic. If I gave him $38.

Now, you have to understand that I was so completely exasperated at this point that I was rather rude to the polite young man who had the great misfortune to have to tell me that the Recovery Disk for the Sony Vaio VGN-CR510E was on back order. That would indicate that more than one person had the same problem I had, for the same reason, would it not? That I was just slower to realize that I needed to buy (from Sony) a product to fix Windows Vista (made by Microsoft)? See my confusion?

My first action -- once my data files had been downloaded to a spare hard drive I luckily just happened to have and Vista was fully restored on my shiny -- was to switch off the automatic updates in the security settings. I downloaded everything released before 10/14, because I knew they were fine, and will only download selectively from now on, until I'm sure that each update has no unforseen consequences. I was without my laptop for fourteen days, during which I meditated quietly in the corner on the merits of being telepathic. Sure would be handy. Oh yeah, and I love my new new Windows Vista; but I never want to be cast into despair again by its insidious automatic helpfulness. I know its darker purpose.  

. . . my joy was short lived. While celebrating the election results I managed (with the aid of my dog, Mr. William McGonagall) to knock my shiny new pink Sony Vaio laptop off the bedside and onto the tile floor. It broke.  

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