Windows Server 2008 Hangs on reboot after Windows Update
Not directly related to SharePoint, but since SP2010 is hosted on Win2008 I’d say this would come in handy to SP admins. I ran into an issue a while ago where the server would become unresponsive after applying Windows updates. It would finish installing updates, and after restart it would just hang in step 3 of 3 or at "Applying computer settings" or "Applying user settings".
Even though at some point when I’d managed to logged in and see my desktop it was impossible to start anything service-based (IIS, SharePoint, Internet Explorer,…)
What did the trick for me? Couple of things, not sure which is THE fix, and I’m adding couple more that I’ve found searching the Web.
1. Reboot into safe mode after applying Windows Updates. This avoids any driver/service conflict issue. After successfully rebooted in safe mode, restart to normal boot.
2. Delete temporary files (to find them, open a "Run" window, type %temp% and press Enter.). This removes the chance of having some legacy corrupt update process file.
3. Check disk space on your system drive – no need for explanation there. Patches can be quite space consuming.
4. If you have IIS (if you have SharePoint, then you do), make a small registry fix to enforce service startup dependancy. Detailed instructions here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2004121.
Hopefully one of those "fixes" will work also for you if you’re facing the same problem.
I ran into this same problem on 6 of my Windows 2008 servers running SharePoint 2010. Before I found this post, I tried Rebooting into safe mode and restarting. That didn’t seem to help.
I found the KB article from Step 4 and that seemed to do the trick for me. You said that you weren’t sure which one did it, so I thought I’d help narrow it down some more.
Thanks for posting this!