getting Windows ready / Don't turn off your computer despite no update

I've had this happen a handful of times on both our machines before. In fact it happened on one just now. Basically I went into Windows update and saw it was checking for updates already. Presumably the scheduled auto process. It took ages to eventually come back and finish the check. There were no updates found. However when I restarted the PC it moved straight into 'getting Windows ready'. I left it half hour but it wasn't changing so I force turned off by holding power button down. I then switched back on and all was back to normal, I did another updates check which finished much quicker and restarted the machine and noted the problem didn't resurface. It seems to be a bug in Windows 10 that manifests itself on rare occasions. There are no updates to install but it seems to get stuck on getting Windows ready. I reckon it may of eventually rebooted if I'd left it long enough but I didn't have hours to spare.

it is rare but I know when it's likely to happen,if checking for updates takes an abnormally long time (several minutes) to complete its check then there is a good chance that upon next restart this 'getting Windows ready' issue will occur. It's as if the computer thinks there are updates and is waiting to install some when in fact none exist and it gets stuck in this phase. But why it happens is over my head. I think there is something in the automatic updates check that tries to happen silently in the background that can cause this. Maybe Windows update server is feeding machines duff information on these occasions. I have actually observed this in three different machines pre and post anniversary update so it was an issue in the previous public build and remains in the current public build. As you can imagine it's extremely irritating for this to happen, and no user wants to be force powering off a machine by holding the power button down to get out of it . That is always a risky solution which can cause corruption but it seems a user has no choice when this bug occurs. I've come to refer to this as the 'phantom updates bug', lol.

unfortunately i cannot remember on which forums but I have seen a fair few users report this happening from time to time. I wonder if anyone on here has observed this though and what they did, did you leave it and eventually rebooted, if so how long did that take? Does anyone have any idea what Windows is trying to do or why this happens?

cheers, Wayne

Hi, it could be what you are saying. That seems to make some sense. Trouble is for a user it's not obvious that this is what the machine is doing. There were no updates being applied but this message is typically associated to when updates are being installed, so it's possibly giving a false impression. I kind of wish I'd let it run longer to see if it eventually came back to life! Admittedly this didn't happen tonight on the desktop PC in my signature, but on our weak living room BRIX box hooked up to our living room tv, it does have a small 160gb SSD but the processor is a snail (celeron 1.9 ghz I think) so could be why the getting Windows ready phase was taking so long.

it has happened on the main PC in my sig in the past too, the getting Windows ready message caused great confusion on that occasion too given there were no updates to install. I think I only left that a few minutes before force powering off due to the confusion, I would be curious to of known how long it would of taken to reboot. We also had another laptop (since sold) where it happened on one occasion. In each case the machines were force powered off and then switched back on whereupon everything was back to normal.

i could switch automatic maintenance off I guess but I suppose that's not great for the computer/Windows install in the long term. If it happens again I will just leave it for longer, maybe an hour at most before taking the draconian step of force powering off.