New laptop narfed by Windows Update?

[Goose]

My parents bought a new laptop today (sony VAIO) and so asked me to set it up and whatnot. First thing i did was run windows update and just let it do its thing. When it finished it popped up saying it couldn't install two of the 40 (ish) updates and to restart now. I restarted and once it got to the login screen i hit 'login' but it now appears to be frozen. The login box disappeared after i hit enter but windows has not loaded. It's just left me the background of the login screen and a mouse cursor (which i CAN move).

Its been like that for about 20 minutes now so i'm guessing something has gone wrong? Whats the best course of action to take?

Thanks

 

[Goose]

In the end i just had to power the laptop off and reboot. It gave me the "windows failed to shutdown properly" message but i just booted in to windows normally and, bizarrely, all seems well.

Not sure what happened really.