Hanging restart after Windows Update

I'm having this problem every time I update. Updates install fine then I click the prompt to restart and the laptop just hangs on 'Restarting'. I left it for 3 hours this week just to check that I'm not being impatient - same problem. So I do a hard restart and all is well, after a few anxious moments. Lo and behold my friend came round today and asked me about the very same issue - different laptops, both updating 8.1. His hard reset didn't go so well but a computer store fixed it and he's up and running now. So why is this happening?

Dunno, but also had problems this month. New laptop with W8.1 updated fine but my old laptop with Vista took ages first to find updates and then to start downloading them (also my nettop with W7). And then the Vista laptop picked up a couple of supplementary updates including one which said summat about fixing the update process which I suspect is related.

Try running sfc /scannow from an elevated commant prompt.
Try running disk cleanup and clearing out unused windows update files
Try clearing out the windows update cache
Check 3rd party programs

I can honestly say I've not seen this issue on any of my machines etc..

I've had a similar problem on Win 7. The solution was to leave it alone for as long as it needed. Rebooting after 3 hours didn't help at all. I left it running overnight and all was OK in the morning. What caused it? I've no idea. The problem hasn't recurred.

Edited by micksharpe (Sat 12-Mar-16 20:32:11)

Is this the one that gives the message "Procedures are in progress ..." or similar? A new on to me until it started occurring frequently on my standby Intel i3 8.1 8GB machine. It can take several days to complete, with power-offs seemingly irrelevant.

Never a hint of it on my main i7 16GB RAM one.

After an update, the svchost service would just run at 100% CPU for hours. It didn't seem to be doing anything at all. The only way to get of it was to let it run its course.