Windows 10: PC hangs at "Personalized Setting" after Windows Updates, near-zero functionality

My wife's PC has been doing this for about 6 months now. This has happened every time she's restarted the machine rather than hibernating it, with a windows update; on restart:


- 5-10 minute delay getting to login screen, no "we're getting things ready",


- after logging in, a black screen

-- ctrl-alt-del works, and allows you to sign out to the login screen,

-- task manager can be launched, but no window ever renders,
--- after starting task-manager, sometimes pressing alt-e will if you want to terminate windows explorer,
-- no other key combinations have any effect - cmd-p, cmd-l, cmd-r,


- power-cycling the machine proceeds normally to login,
- the old "Personalized Settings" dialog appears on the screen,
- windows hangs here for upto 24+ hours we've not tried longer,
- some parts of the screen have a spinner associated with them,
-- cmd-p brings up the projection charm bar,
-- cmd-l brings up the lock screen,
-- ctrl-alt-del brings up the reboot/signout screen,
- starting task manager does not render a window, but does change which mouse cursor appears for some portions of the display,

- rebooting into safe mode does not help,
-- gets to the safe mode screen with task bar rendered,
-- clicking on the task bar eventually produces a dialog saying the application is not responding do you want to restart it.

sfc and dism pointed at the c: drive don't see anything wrong;
- 18362.19h1_release.190318-1202 where the problem is occurring,
- stand-alone windows professional; not in a domain or workgroup.

It's been hit or miss whether rolling back the windows version will solve the problem, most of the time I've ended up having to "reset this pc" :

:)

 

Windows Update suddenly hangs?

Windows Update is suddenly hanging for some reason... I went and downloaded and installed the first bunch of updates, restarted when asked, and now when I go back to windows update I just get the window with a white box forever. Reboot and it still does it. This happens to be on my main machine, running windows 7.

I've also noticed when I reboot it says configuring windows update, step 3 of 3, 47%. Maybe it somehow skipped something and is screwed forever?

 

Settings/Personalization

Hi,

We suggest that you follow the steps below to put your settings back to default and see if it helps.

• Right-click your mouse on your desktop.
• Click on Personalize.
• Select Colors.
• Click on High contrast settings.
• From the drop-down menu, select None.
• Click Apply.
• Reboot the PC for the changes to take effect.

Let us know the result.

 

Windows 10 update hangs on downloading updates at 98%

Hi vinodh,

In step 3 you state to press enter after after each command but its written like one sentence,could you list them so we can identify each command please.my pc just hangs on "checking for updates" so i installed the win 10 updater and that just hangs on 99%
so i will try what you suggest above.

Thanks