KB ID 0001755

Problem

You may see the “A Reboot From a Previous Installation is Pending” error when either attempting to install Microsoft Exchange or apply a cumulative update, (which is basically a reinstall anyway!) You may also see this if you are only installing the management tools.

At command line;

A reboot from a previous installation is pending. Please restart the system and then rerun Setup.

Or if you are running the install upgrade from the GUI;

A Reboot From a Previous Installation is Pending : FIX

Before we go any further, I’m assuming you have rebooted the server in question, this post is for the good folk who have already done the obvious, and are still getting prompted with the above error!

This happens because the setup procedure checks TWO registry keys, though to be fair the first one is for older versions of the OS so don’t be surprised if you look for it, and the key does NOT exist, there’s nothing wrong!

Open the registry editor and navigate to;

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HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Updates\UpdateExeVolatile

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If the key exists either delete it completely or set its value to ‘0’ (Zero).

Then navigate to;

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HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\PendingFileRenameOperations

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This is a string value which means it can contain multiple values, as you will probably see most of them will be corrupt links to things. Many sites will tell you to delete the entire string value (PendingFileRenameOperations), but you don’t need to simply empty out all the values like so, before;

After

Then retry.

Related Articles, References, Credits, or External Links

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