Windows 11 Users Hit with Black Screens After Preview Update
Microsoft has issued an update to its Windows 11 operating system after users reported experiencing black screens after signing in following installation of a preview update released on August 27.
The issue, which affects devices running current versions of Windows 11, occurs when Explorer.exe, the process responsible for the desktop, fails to launch, leaving users staring at a blank screen. According to Microsoft's investigation, the problem is more common in environments using FSLogix on Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) hosts and tends to reproduce with existing user profiles.
To mitigate this issue, Microsoft has provided two interim workarounds: manually launching the desktop by typing explorer.exe into Task Manager or leveraging 'Known Issue Rollback' (KIR), a mechanism that rolls back only the specific change causing the problem. In enterprise environments where KIR is disabled by Group Policy, administrators can run a Windows Installer package to configure a special Group Policy.