I'm going to point you to a web page where you can change one setting, and Windows will tell you what it is doing when it is starting up, and preparing to shutdown, and when its working on updates. These will appear in the same place on the blue screen that tells you not to shut down while Windows is applying the updates. Now the messages may not mean much to you, but it might give us a clue as to what part of the process is freezing up.
http://www.thewindowsclub.com/enable-verbose-status-message-windows
I found it easiest to drag the mouse to the lower left corner where the windows icon pops up (formerly the start button), and right click and select
Run, and type in
gpedit.msc, and then follow that on out.