Windows Upgrade stuck at blank screen with only Recycle Bin & Taskbar

Windows 10 Updates or Windows 11 Updates have their own set of bad luck. It has caused issues on a lot of Windows PC to a measure which we haven’t seen before. One such issue is about keyboard layout, a blank screen with just Recycle Bin/Taskbar. It seems that Microsoft and the culprit, Avast Antivirus, have officially acknowledged it. In this post, we are suggesting a solution for this. Check out our guide to fixing Windows 11/10 Update stuck at a blank screen with only Recycle Bin & Taskbar or Choose your keyboard layout.

Windows Upgrade stuck at blank screen

Before we go ahead to find a solution, here is a brief description of the error. There are two of them.

1. As soon as you log in to your account, you will observe a blank screen with only a Recycle Bin and a taskbar.  There will be no start screen, and even killing Windows Explorer with Task Manager will not help.
2. During the upgrade, the OS will prompt you Choose your keyboard layout and will be stuck at that.

Microsoft points the problem towards Avast Behavior Shield which conflicts with a Windows Update. While Avast has released an update to fix this issue, you will have to restore your system to a point from where a fix can be performed.

Users may also find that their Update screen is stuck at the Choose your keyboard layout screen,

It seems that even though some users have tried performing a rollback, there is some problem. So our first method is to repair the rollback, and in case you are stuck at any point, switch to the second method.

1] Use Command Prompt to repair Windows Rollback

Here we will use command bcdedit. This command-line tool is to manage Boot Configuration Data (BCD). BCD files provide a store that is used to describe boot applications and boot application settings. So when you are the screen where it gets stuck, follow the steps below:

1. Here select US keyboard, and then at the “Choose an option screen”.
2. The next screen should have the top left tile which reads “Continue – Exit and continue to Windows Rollback”. (If you don’t see this, switch to the second method)
3. Select Troubleshoot > Command Prompt. > type bcdedit and press Enter.
4. There should be 4 entries displayed.
   1. Ignore the first entry, called {bootmgr}.
   2. The next entries will have an attribute called “device” or “bootstatdevice”, which will have a value similar to partition=E: (example)
5. In the command prompt, switch to the drive letter you noted in the previous step.  In this example, you would type E: and press Enter.
6. Type the following command and then press Enter:
   • copy \Windows.old\Windows\System32\OOBE\SetupPlatform\SetupPlatform.exe \$WINDOWS.~BT\Sources
7. When completed, you should see the output, “1 file(s) copied”.  If you see anything else, quit, and switch to the next method we have mentioned.
8. Now you need to exit the command prompt, and it will take you to the Choose an option screen.
9. Select Continue – Exit and continue to Windows Rollback.

This will initiate the Windows Rollback, and restore your system to the previous version of Windows. Once it completes, it’s best not to upgrade manually, and wait for a notification from the Windows Update to notify you about an upgrade.

2] Perform an in-place upgrade

In this method, we will try to trick the installation process as if there is another copy of Windows 10 Installed. We will rename the Windows.old folder to protect your personal files from being overwritten in certain scenarios.

To restore your system, you will need:

• A blank USB drive with at least 8 GB of disk space
• Another working Windows PC that you can use to create a bootable Windows 10 device.

In case things go south upgrading an in-place upgrade, the procedure of which has been shown in this post on Windows Upgrade stuck at Choose your keyboard layout screen. Now let’s follow the steps below:

1. Download the Media Creation Tool on any other PC. This will create a bootable disk for installation.
2. Boot from the USB device you just created by changing the settings in your BIOS.
3. Since we are trying to recover the old installation, we will stop the place where it asks to choose keyboard layout. Here select US keyboard, and then at the Choose an options screen, select Troubleshoot > Command Prompt.
4. In the cmd.exe window, type C: and press Enter. Assuming C is the drive where your Windows was installed.
5. Type the following command Ren Windows.old Windows.old.bak, and press Enter.  
6. Exit the command prompt, and you will be back to Choose an option screen that we saw before.
7. Select Use another operating system > Windows 10 on volume X, where “X” will be a number.
8. Give it a few minutes, and it will load the desktop.

Once this is complete, we are back to our usual desktop screen, and from here, we can kick-start Windows installation manually. Since your access will be limited if the actual desktop doesn’t get loaded, we will use the Task Manager to launch the Windows 10 Setup.exe, which is available on the USB.

• Right-click any blank area on the taskbar, and then select Task Manager > More details > Select File, then Run new task.
• In the dialog box that appears, check the box for Create this task with administrator privileges.
• Select Browse, and select the setup.exe file which is available on the USB drive.
• This will kickstart the Windows Upgrade. However, make sure to uncheck the option that tries to check for new updates

Once the upgrade is complete, you can recover all your files from the Windows.old.bak folder.

I hope this works for you!

How do I restart the Graphics Driver in Windows?

If you do not see anything on your screen except for a black screen, then you can use the keyboard shortcut Windows key + Ctrl + Shift + B to reload. The monitors will blink a couple of times as the driver is restarted. If you have multiple monitors, you should see it happening for each of them.

Can I interrupt a Windows Upgrade process if I can still see the desktop?

If the Upgrade process has not restarted the PC and doesn’t show any warning asking you not to reboot, then it’s safe. The upgrade process at the initial stages downloads the files and backs up existing folders. Even if this process is interrupted, there will be no harm done. So yes you can interrupt the process while you can still see the desktop.