Windows 11 Moment 5 update reportedly causes a ‘white screen of doom’ along with installation failures

Windows 11 users are now receiving the Moment 5 update, which began rolling out a week ago, but some folks have sadly been hit by some frustrating glitches – including a ‘white screen’ crash.

Windows Latest picked up on a few problems with the April cumulative update for Windows 11, including some folks getting installation failures.

This is a long-running gremlin in the works whereby the update process falls over and doesn’t install, producing an error that is essentially meaningless garbage. (Or as Microsoft calls it, a stop error code – a hexadecimal string such as ‘0x800705b9’ which is one of the codes spotted in this instance).

That gives you no clue as to how to resolve the problem, and trying to install again results in the same crash happening with the Moment 5 update. About all you can do is sit tight and hope Microsoft resolves the issue, for now, or try upgrading via the Media Creation Tool. (Which we wouldn’t recommend to anyone but the more tech-savvy readers out there – if you don’t know what this tool is, best to steer clear on balance).

The other major stumbling block with this April update is a problem that sounds like the white equivalent of the famed Blue Screen of Death (BSoD) whereby the PC is locked up and needs to be rebooted to get back to normal.

Windows Latest describes what they encountered, which is after installing Moment 5 successfully, they got stuck on a white screen. This looks like some kind of setup screen, or indeed one of the panels trying to push you to do something post-update – like finishing setting up Windows or your Microsoft Account – except it’s blank (save for a couple of tiny icons).

The website notes that they were able to boot to the desktop after disconnecting the internet, and fortunately for Windows Latest, the white screen didn’t return after that.

There’s also evidence of this issue on Reddit and this thread on Microsoft’s Answers.com help forum, where some folks are saying this white screen keeps coming back.

So, while Windows Latest found it was an issue that went away swiftly, others apparently aren’t so lucky. So we’re calling this the ‘white screen of doom’ as it appears to be persistent at least for some, which must be a real pain.

(Image credit: Max7192 (Microsoft Answers.com))

Analysis: Unplug the internet

What’s interesting to note is that one of the affected people on Answers.com states: “The only thing working for me atm is to start the computer without internet and I don’t get the white screen.” Somebody else replies that they tried this and it worked.

Windows Latest also observes disconnecting from the internet worked to sidestep the white screen, so this is definitely something you should give a whirl if you’re affected by this problem.

This lends some credibility to the idea that this is some kind of nag panel, and it’s failing to pipe through the content from Microsoft’s servers, perhaps – and when you pull the plug on the internet, it stops trying and finally loads the desktop. (That’s purely wild guesswork, mind you).

It’s also worth noting that on the above Reddit thread, there are some consistent mentions of problems with PCs resuming from sleep (or monitors turning back on after waking the system). So that might be one to watch out for, too.

Hopefully, Microsoft is looking into the reports of these problems and will be on hand with some official advice soon enough. We’ve reached out to the company and will update this article with any response to the apparent problems with the April update. Currently, the official support document from Microsoft lists no known issues with Moment 5.

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