Windows not fully booting after patching (black screen after windows logo)

I have noticed on several machines over different patch cycles that I come across the occasional machine that will start the boot sequence, it shows the early windows logo and then goes to the temporary black screen prior to the blue background of group policy and other OS startup items. The problem though is that it stays at the black screen without progressing. On some machines there seems to be a "normal" hang here with 0 disk activity and apparently nothing happening, but in this case the hard drive with briefly tick for a moment every few seconds. So it appears like something is happening, but the machine never boots. In the few cases I have seen this, booting to safe mode usually works to resolve the problem. Since patches install over multiple stages of shutdown and preboot, it may be something is preventing it from finishing. Safemode seems to get around this block for the OS to resolve the problem, and the next reboot is back to normal.