I did a search for the pending file and I cant find it. the one I was able to delete was C:\Windows\WinSxS\cleanup.xml. I just turned it on and its right back in the loop again. Ugh. With this HP, you had to make your own recovery discs when you set up your pc, and a bootable disk. The boot only runs that pc doctor program which I'm finding quite useless. The recovery disk will take me to the options I want, but repair windows isn't one of them. I don't know where to go from there. I checked to run from disk but it says it cant repair it. But I ran every diagnostic there was and they all passed. ugh...you'd think by now Microsoft would make a system that works...lol. so, any idea how I can get to the pending file? I cant even start in safe mode...