Windows Desktop Update hangs at KB980408 while Setting up personalized settings

[Shazid]

I am having Windows XP on my system and recently updated to KB980408 windows update. After updating I restarted my pc only to see a black screen with a message saying "Setting up personalized settings for: Windows Desktop Update" upon boot. It has remained on this screen for many hours now and when I am trying to move the mouse then nothing happens. But Task Manager and other programs are opening fine? Any ideas whats wrong here?

[Felisha]

Even I was facing this same problem on my computer. This problem started immediately after login. The fix that I found was to press ctrl+alt+del to start Task Manager and then kill the processes for Personalized settings. After that you will have to manually run the exporer.exe by going into File > Run > and type Explorer.exe and press Enter and then Windows will load normally.

[Emiliio]

Can you try to restore Windows XP to a previous state and see if that helps. Follow the below steps to do that:

1. Log on to Windows as an administrator.
2. Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, point to System Tools, and then click System Restore.
3. On the Welcome to System Restore page, click to select the Restore my computer to an earlier time option, and then click Next.
4. On the Select a Restore Point page, click the most recent system restore point in the On this list, click a restore point list, and then click Next.
5. On the Confirm Restore Point Selection page, click Next. System Restore restores the previous Windows XP configuration, and then restarts the computer.
6. Log on to the computer as an administrator. Then, click OK on the System Restore Restoration Complete page.

You can find more methods here - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306084

[Devasis]

I was facing the same problem on my Windows 7 machine with Service Pack 1. To fix this issue I pressed ctrl+alt+del to open Task Manager and then choose New Process and then regedit. After that searched for the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce and deleted entry with System32\SP1Check-like and restarted normally, now everything is working fine.