on a lenovo!
I believe what happened is that someone mistakenly unplugged the computer while it was installing updates. I know you say the updates don't auto install but if there's a possibility that some update came through and the computer was turned off it will wreak havoc with the restart.
I brought the Lenovo to tech support at school and we basically had to let it run through several restart cycles to "system restore" and the problem cleared itself after a few cycles. It then completed the updates.

Hope this helps.