This is an old thread, but since I've been looking into pending.xml lately (on a stubborn Win7 machine): I have never seen the screen that Saaglem showed in his OP that shows any of my updates are Pending. Does that mean that if I load a Live NTLite and NTLite doesn't show any updates Pending, that Windows is sure that there's nothing in pending.xml or in the registry at SessionsPending that it is trying to secretly update? (Or, in other words, I don't need to hack around in Windows, deleting the pending.xml or other Sessions stuff?)