System Update Stuck - Help a Newbie!

Well, I just took delivery of my new T61 with 8300 / XP. It says to update the software with System Update. So I do as it says, and I get a message that says "installing update 2 of 71..." and "Do not turn off or unplug your computer..."

It's been giving me the same message for over an hour. It can't take that long to get only to update #2.

I'm surprised my brand-new laptop would need 71 updates, but that aside, what should I do at this point? If I turn off the laptop and reboot, I may have corrupted something. If it is just a few system files I can always do a system restore with the blue button. If that's the BIOS, I'm screwed. Nasty gamble.

What is the wisdom of you experts? I searched the forums back to the beginning of 2007 and didn't find anyone with the same problem.

By the way, a couple of items: I installed anti spyware and a firewall before doing the update (I wasn't going to connect to the web without it). I use Sunbelt CounterSpy and Firewall. Maybe this is the cause of the problem? Nevertheless, what do I do now?

Thanks!

 

xp is old, thats why u need so many updates.

 

In my experience, System Update is nothing but trouble. You're better off going to the Lenovo driver matrix website and doing all the driver installations manually.

 

Yes, if I had to do it again, I'd go to the Lenovo driver matrix site. But at the moment I can't go there. My new T61 is stuck in the middle of an update, where it's been for about 12 hours now.

The question is: do I force a shutdown with the power button and risk trashing something? Is there some combination of keys to to get the update to stop? What are the alternatives available to me now?

 

I'm not familiar with your firewall, but on some (Comodo, OA, ZA) they don't allow installers unless you give them "permission." You can try either disabling your firewall or going into its settings to give the Windows Updater permission.

 

Thanks Mtnbiker, I wondered about that too. The firewall did pop up a permission window at the beginning, and again after about an hour. Nothing since then. I don't know how to get access to the firewall at this point. Or anything else for that matter.

As you guys know the windows update installer takes over the machine completely. While it's still stuck on "Installing update 2 of 71" I cannot get to any other function of the computer. It appears that my only choice is to force the machine to turn off with the power button. I don't like the risk of the damage that might do, so I'm looking for alternatives.

 

If you do that you might need to do a complete reinstall of the OS

 

yes, i think you should shut down.

Hopefully it was not the Bios update.

Thinkvantage System Update is normally a very good program, but
some drivers have to installed in a specific order.

Look at every Update into the relaease notes!

For example Powermanagement Driver and Hotkey have to been installed, first one then the other.

Good Luck

P.S.
If it is dead, call Lenovo and say it don´t turn on, normally they repair
without questions.

 

Just to close the loop on this, I did shut down the system. I restarted it without problem (apparently it wasn't in the middle of a bios update at the time it seized up). Just to be safe I did a system restore with the ThinkVantage button. This worked well, and gave me a chance to get rid of bloatware such as Norton (what a resource pig!).

Thanks everyone.