If when you turn on a new Windows 11/10 device for the first time your device starts on the Welcome Screen, which displays Other user, instead of starting in the Out of Box Experience (OOBE), and you cannot log on to the device or use Windows, then this post will identify the cause of this abnormal behavior, as well as present the workaround for this issue.
Windows 11/10 boots to Welcome Screen instead of OOBE
The reason that you might experience the issue whereby you turn on a new Windows device for the first time and the device starts on the Welcome Screen, instead of starting in OOBE is because dwm.exe, a critical Windows process fails to start.
According to Microsoft, in some circumstances, the video driver sends a TDR (Timeout Detect Recovery) which (by design) leads to Winlogon to stop and restart the DWM. If the TDR happens very early in the boot sequence (either before the Winlogon state machine is fully initialized or before Winlogon has even launched the DWM for the first time), there is a condition where we can get into a loop where dwm.exe is terminated over and over again. Once in this loop, the session gets terminated, which causes it to be logged in as an Other User.
If you’re faced with this issue, you can try the recommended workaround described below to quickly fix the issue:
- Press and hold the Shift key.
- Press or click the Power button in the lower-right corner of the Welcome Screen.
- Press or click the Restart option.
If this doesn’t work, press and hold the Power button for 30 seconds to completely restart the computer.
We hope something here helps you.
