How to Fix ‘Undoing Changes Made To Your Computer’?

The ‘Undoing Changes Made To Your Computer’ error after installing updates is a familiar sight for Windows 10 and Windows 11 owners. In some cases, the error message may look different, slightly rephrased, but it means exactly the same thing: something has obviously gone wrong when updating Windows.

What could’ve caused issues during Windows update?

“But what could have gone wrong?” – you may have wondered. In fact, lots of things:

• the update files got corrupted (after or during the initial boot);
• the Windows update process was forcefully interrupted, for example by a sudden power outage or by accidentally pressing the power button;
• third-party software interfered with the installation of the updates;
• the system files (or the entire Windows image) were corrupted before installation began;
• file system errors, bad blocks or even SSD/HDD hardware failures;
• and much, much more.

Ways to fix ‘Undoing Changes Made To Your Computer’

Waiting

Perhaps the most obvious solution to the problem is to wait. It is worth noting that the process of undoing changes can last from 30 minutes to 2-3 hours. Here everything will depend solely on the computer configuration itself and the amount of updates with which you have problems. Wait as long as possible. There is always a chance that nothing hangs and the changes are still undone.

Steps to do in the Windows recovery environment

Several hours have passed – no changes. The message ‘Undoing Changes Made To Your Computer’ still hangs on the monitor and doesn’t go anywhere. Well, in that case, the Windows recovery environment (Windows RE) tools come to your rescue. Of course, you will have to get somewhere installation media with the correct version of Windows.

Once you have the media with Windows on it:

• boot through it and get to the “Install Windows” box;
• click on “Restore” to enter the Windows recovery environment;
• go to the Troubleshooting subsection.

Great, here you will need to pay attention to three options: “System Restore”, “Remove Updates”, and “Command Prompt”.

When you select the first option, you will see a box with the restore points in front of you. Select the appropriate restore point, which at the time of its creation had no problems with the system point, i.e. before the updates were installed, and apply it. The second option will allow you to remove recently installed component updates or patches (fixes) from Windows. The process is fully automatic – run it and wait.

The third option will open a Command Prompt window, where you will need to run the following series of commands:

• notepad

Note: Notepad is called to check the system partition letter. The point is that in the recovery environment, this partition might be signed not by the familiar C, but by a completely different letter. Correct the following command to match the letter of your system partition.

• cd C:\windows\winsxs
• ren pending.xml pending.old

After running the commands, restart your PC and check for the problem.

How to prevent the ‘Undoing Changes Made To Your Computer’ message from appearing if I’ve managed to log in to the OS?

Congratulations, you’ve managed to bypass the ‘Undoing Changes Made To Your Computer’ and regain control of your system. Now you’re probably wondering: how do you install updates and not run into the same error? There is a universal set of steps that will somehow protect you from this problem in the future. Try to do the following on your PC:

• press WIN+R to open a “Run” dialog box;
• type CMD in the empty line and press CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER;
• run the following commands in the console to reset the Update Center cache:
  • net stop wuauserv
  • cd C:{Windows\SoftwareDistribution
  • del /f /s /q Download
  • net start wuauserv
• now run these commands to restore the system files, the Windows image and to check the disk for errors:
  • sfc /scannow
  • chkdsk c: /f
  • DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /ScanHealth
  • DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth
• press WIN+R and run services.msc;
• go to the properties of the service “Application Ready” and set its startup type to “Manual”;
• open System Explorer and make sure that there is free space on your system partition;
• go to “System Configuration” by running (WIN+R) msconfig;
• in the “General” tab, activate the “Selective startup”→ “Load system services” options;
• in the “Services” tab, activate the “Do not display Microsoft services” option and click on the “Disable all” button;
• run Windows Update again.

And now cross your fingers and hope that the error ‘Undoing Changes Made To Your Computer’ will not appear.

Authordman