“Preparing to Install” Fix — Windows Update in Vista

I’ve been working most of the day on a laptop that I just cannot get the Windows Updates to install.  A while ago, it received the dreaded “Configuring updates: Stage 3 of 3 – 0% complete.  Do not turn off your computer” with a continuous reboot after an automatic update.  See here for more info.  I did the workaround for that (no thanks for Microsoft).

Now, it had error 8000FFFF.  Thanks to nskillen here, I fixed that, but Windows Update would just have “Preparing to Install..” but would never work.

So, my answer was to install this update from Microsoft.  This 937287 update, I believe, is a fixed version of the update that failed in the beginning.  In fact, here is a paragraph from the end of the instructions on how to fix your computer during the Stage 3 of 3 – 0% problem:

To avoid this problem, obtain and install update 937287 from the Microsoft Download Center separately from all other updates on Windows Update site. Install the update that applies to your version of Windows Vista to enable future updates to be installed successfully.