Although most of the time the version update from 1709 to 1803 goes without issues, there has been quite a lot of them during the last week. This is the fix I found out and have forwarded to Microsoft (by demand) and many of the local shops struggling with the problem.
Symptoms:
- The computer may start by asking for preferred language. If it goes straight to login, continue where applicable.
- It then may go to Recovery Mode, defaulting Rollback as an option. Choosing it won't work.
- Below the Rollback is another button about continuing to another OS. There's two instances of Win10 which apparently are identical. Choose either.
- At that point the computer should slowly continue the login process but the Desktop is black and empty with only the Trashbin image and an error message about the Desktop not loading.
- If you get other error messages, restart and repeat until you get to the Desktop.
Solution:
- Click OK for the error message
- Plug in a USB stick containing the latest installation media created "To be used in another computer" and "Use settings for this computer" unchecked as per https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10
- Start Task Manager by right clicking the Taskbar
- From the File menu "Run New Task"
- Browse to the stick and choose Setup(.exe)
- Check "Create this task with administrative privileges", click OK. The installation procedure will start in a few seconds. Close Task Manager.
- During the installation procedure uncheck "Check for updates"
- You may not see the window asking about saving or deleting files. Don't worry!
- After having verified your computer is ready for the install, you should see a window showing that your files and applications will be saved. If not, start over! If so, click Install.
- After a couple of hours the installation should have ended, showing a question about speech recognition. That's normal for this update. Click the chapter of your preference, click Accept. There's more similar questions, rinse and repeat.
- You should now be able to access your computer normally.
- If you're using Wlan, you'll have to re-enter the wpa key.
- In case at some boot there's two buttons for choosing Windows 10, choose the upper one. If it works, use msconfig to remove the extra boot option.
I can't tell if it's only an issue with the Finnish language pack version, but in case it's universal, hope this helps someone.
