So I run Windows 8 in a VMWare VM. Today I got that lovely "your computer will reboot in 15 minutes to install important updates". So, I rebooted it. It did all the "applying update" magic and then when it started back up it hung at starting up. It didn't actually hang, but it just didn't do anything. (no disk activity or anything, but little spinner is still going)
Here's the fun part. This isn't the first time this happened either. I have two VMs setup in a similar way, both Windows 8 Enterprise running under VMWare 9, but on different physical machines and with slightly different configurations.
I already "fixed" one of my machines which had this exact problem, which resulted in having to do a System Restore and having to redo the setup of a lot of stuff. Now, it just now happened with this VM though which is much more important and I'd like to avoid a system restore. However, I can't get into a safe mode or anything like that and I don't see any kind of way to do anything but a system restore.
Is there another option to fix this botched Windows Update without doing a system restore?
