How frelled is my old laptop? It is stuck in update mode. The screen has said the "do not power down. Installing 1 of 31 updates" for over 8 HOURS!

It's about 5 year old laptop. Compaq single core guy running Win7 home premium. It's USB ports have become less responsive of late, and the processor just spikes with no apps running. I've done security scans, and it's come up clean. It's become rather frustrating.

So is this update thing a death nail in its coffin?

I had that happen with a cheap Acer laptop that I was updating to windows 8.1. It took about 25 hours for the first update, no joke.

Holy motherboard, Batman. That is crazy!

Ok, I will leave it spinning while at work.

Omnis: [link]

Of course Microsoft tells you everything except the required first step for those resolution steps, which is to unplug the frelling thing and restart it, so that it won't be frozen anymore and you can actually carry on with the troubleshooting.

Thanks for the link, Jon. And the reminder to power down first, DX. When I got home, it's showing "shutting down...". No clue how long it's been in that state. I'll cook dinner and come back to it. There is a swirly thing still moving, so it's not frozen.

My computer just came back from repairs for something else, and now it is working when plugged in but not charging. I can't bring it back to the shop until they re-open tomorrow, but any advice on what could be wrong?

Laptop or desktop? If it's a laptop, maybe the battery isn't seated correctly?

Laptop.

Try popping out the battery and popping it back in.