Earlier tonight, I was able to get my laptop straightened out after having
been turned off and ignored for two months. I was dreading the ordeal of
getting a mess with a bungled install fixed.

Got it all straightened out. I then connected a brand new backup drive,
which I needed to format as NTFS. I started it shortly after midnight. I
kept going back in the laptop room and checking on the progress bar. Check
before last, it was almost done. Last check, I saw the Windows Vista startup
progress bar ...

Oh My God. Windows Update ... What day is it? Oh, no ... this is Tuesday
morning ... it is 3 a.m. !!!

How about a conditional that checks for hard drive formatting in progress
that would delay the Windows Update restart until after completion of the
formatting operation?

The poor little brand new drive in question no longer has a name and has 0
bytes, 0 bytes.

Sigh ... Right-click, Format ...

I do understand that this is entirely my fault ... there is, after all, a
raging electrical storm going on outside. I shouldn't even have my computers
plugged in to the wall. And I really shouldn't have Automatic Updates turned
on when performing a format operation. Note to Self: always disable
Automatic Updates before beginning a format operation.

And how could I possibly forget about Update Tuesday ... the very sad ...
vanilla ...