Preparing to configure Windows. Do not turn off your computer.

Stuck on "Preparing to configure Windows. Do not turn off your computer" as I wanted to restart the Windows Server 2008 machine. I could still ping the server but could not able to remote using either Dameware Mini Remote Control tool or Remote Desktop Connection. I don't want to hard boot the server because it can result in windows operating system crash.

Solution:

1. Open services.msc on the other server or machine.
2. Right-click Services(Local) and select Connect to another computer...
3. On the another computer box, type the hostname of the machine that has error.
4. Navigate to Windows Modules Installer, you will notice that the status is stopping.
5. Right-click on Windows Modules Installer and select Properties then Recovery
6. On the subsequent failures, choose either Restart the Computer if you want to restart the machine or choose Restart the Service
7. Wait for a couple of minutes and the machine will restart automatically if you select Restart the Computer.

Windows 7 Aero peek not working when hovering taskbar icons

In my Windows 7 computer, I was once experienced that aero peek (transparency) is not working when hovering taskbar icons.

In this example below, the cursor is hovered on the control panel icon but aero peek is not working cause it does not preview as thumbnail. But instead it only display the list of opened items in the control panel.




You can see the image below where aero peek is working. The cursor is hovered on the Internet Explorer browser icon on the taskbar and it displayed a mini window or it preview as thumbnail for all IE open tabs and windows.




To troubleshoot the issue, right-click on the desktop and select Personalize


Click Troubleshoot problems with transparency and other Aero effects


Click Advanced to verify if "Apply repairs has been checked" then click Next



It seems that a mirror driver is causing the aero peek not to work properly. To solve the issue, you need to close the programs that are using mirror drivers.



Even though troubleshooting was unable to automatically fix the issue, but we already identify that Mirror drivers don't support Aero effects.



To manually fix the issue. Go to Control Panel > Device Manager > Display adapters
Mine i have "DameWare Development Mirror Driver 64-bit"


Right-click on the mirror driver and select "Uninstall".