Why am I getting this "Let's finish setting up your device" blue screen?

[Rod Falanga]

I've got Windows 10 Pro. I'm currently at release 2004 (OS Build 19041.508). Some months back, my machine was really screwed up when the upgrade to Windows 10 came along. I got one of those "Let's finish setting up your device" messages, which I did. At that point, it corrupted all the profiles on my Windows 10 system. I vowed to NEVER again run that!

So, I purchased an SSD drive, replaced my old hard drive, installed Windows 10 Pro on it and that's the way it's been for 4 or 5 months.

But every few days I get this threatening message:

Here's that extremely irritating msg

however, now it gives me the information that it's going to pester me again in 3 days if I don't click the Continue button.

First, I do NOT want to do that, because of how it corrupted all my profiles the last time.

Secondly, I've already done everything that worthless, irritating, continually in my face message talks about.

• I cannot use Windows Hello on this PC, as the motherboard does NOT support it
• I've already linked my phone to my PC
• I already synchronize my history to OneDrive
• I already have set up a Microsoft 365 subscription, which I utilize on this PC
• Like I said previously, I've already got OneDrive connected AND running, on this PC

So, how do I stop this useless message popping up over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, without totally corrupting all of the Windows profiles on my machine? This irritating message is the equivalent of that irritating UAC popup that Windows Vista plagued everyone with.

[#2 · Accepted solution]

Hello @Rod Falanga,

Go to Settings > System > Notifications & actions and uncheck Suggest ways I can finish setting up my device to get the most out of Windows option. This should turn off that screen.

If that doesn't works, try the registry based Method 2 mentioned here:

https://www.kapilarya.com/how-to-disable-get-even-more-out-of-windows-screen-windows-10

To help you more on this, here's the video fix:

Hope this helps!

Note: Included link in this reply refers to blog post by a trusted Microsoft MVP. 

*This reply was updated with additional information.

[#3]

@Kapil Arya will turning off that setting mean that I'll no longer get any notifications about necessary updates to Windows, or when the fall release of Windows 10 is available to be installed on my PC?

[#4]

@Rod Falanga, IMO, changing that setting should not have any effect on getting updates. You'll be able to check for latest updates as usual from Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update.

Regards. 

[#5]

@Kapil Arya  Neither of these options exist on the Windows 10 machine I am working with. Is there an alternate way?

[#6]

@daver256, Try the registry method and see if it works for you.

[#7]

You need to be on W10 version 2004 or newer. The settings to disable these were added in build 18945 from what I see online. So this will not likely work on 1903, 1909, etc.

I am on 20H2 and it works fine on multiple machines, either going through notifications and actions via Settings or just setting the registry key.

[#8]

Hi Kapil,
My Mom’s computer is stuck in “find my device screen”

All buttons loops back and no option for any selections to be made is available. Ctrl alt delete won’t bring up the menu it does nothing when you try to access ctrl alt del. Start menu not showing. Restarted and updated computer. Restart does go to her home screen but then this screen comes up again and I cannot get her out of this devices set up screen. Any tips? Thanks so much in advance!

[#9]

Hello @AshleyCizman,

Can you share us the screenshot of the screen where the computer is currently? Also, what exactly happens when you start machine, do you see the boot screen and then login screen?

Regards.

[#10]

It starts as usual and goes to desktop. Then quickly switches off to this screen. It’s all a loop and there is no visible way to click out of it. No settings to even select....

my pictures aren’t valid format. Will try to get this sorted 

[#11]

Can you press windows+p on the setting up new laptop?

[#12]

@Rod Falanga, Thank you so much for posting this!
I needed help for this same thing but for different reasons. At some point I allowed some of my OneNote notebooks to OneDrive and then I noticed some corruption of my pages, so I tried to migrate back to local computer only. Unfortunately somehow my files had been changed in OneDrive, and I was unable to edit any of the pages on my notebooks once I got them back on my computer only. I decided I can't allow my files to live on OneDrive ever again.
So I need a way to keep that "welcome" screen from returning every 3 days.
I really appreciate your thorough explanation of the problem you were having!

[#13]

Look...the problem here is that Microsoft is getting more and more intrusive.  Because they can get away with it unless we're willing to go to IOS or Linux or Chrome OS. It's having to wait 15 minutes to use my office laptop when I open up in the morning when Microsoft has decided to run it's required updates...and I'm standing like a dork in front of co-workers are waiting for my presentation.

Now it's this "Finish Setting up Your Device" blue screen...on a device that I've been running for years...because Microsoft just won't quit trying to sell me Office 365 that I don't want, or using "One Cloud" that I don't want...and pushing other stuff that if I wanted it...I would already have it. So now we have this blue screen that we can't get rid of without agreeing to be reminded again in three days or hitting "continue" and going through all the screens and telling Microsoft I don't want it. How's about giving us a "No Thanks" button with a "Don't Send This Again" checkbox.

But no...if we have an early version of Wiindows 10...we can't get rid of this pop-up blue screen without spending our time going into the registry for who knows how long it will take...to MAYBE get rid of this pop-up blue screen.

It makes me long for the days of Windows 7. Hell...it makes me long for the days of XP.

We bought this gear with your operating system on it. How's about you just leave us the _______ alone and let us use it.

[#14]

It's a good rant but at this point it shouldn't even matter anymore hopefully. 2004 is eol and later versions don't seem to be as aggressive with this screen.
Unfortunately they know businesses/enterprise aren't going to move away from MS and that is a huge market. The threat to go to MacOS, Linux, etc isn't real except maybe for home / SOHO users.
I'd settle for some testing of updates at this point because that clearly isn't happening to the level it should. Breaking Hyper-V on servers with an update is almost impressive if it weren't so awful.

[#15]

Sorry, I have a dissenting opinion.

I work in an educational environment.

We have over 200 public and 300+ staff PC's running on WIN10 version 21H2.

The public PC's have a software FREEZE applied to prevent accidental virus's or hard drive erasure.

Or software / malware installs.

"Let's finish setting up your device"  pops up regularly, every couple months.

We un-freeze, clear the,  Blue Screen, re-freeze and darned if it doesn't return.

Randomly and sporadically on these PC's.  No consistent pattern or schedule.

It's Continuous labor, off schedule.

Delaying other projects

[#16]

I'm sure a bunch of us here are working in education/public service/etc. We use Faronics Deep Freeze at a few of my sites and have used things like Clean Slate, Centurion Guard (with and without hardware keys), and even Steady State back in the XP days.
Deep Freeze works fine with the public Win10 computers but you need to set them correctly with group policies and if you have upwards of 200 PCs then you'd be crazy NOT to be using WSUS along with GPOs tailored to those frozen PCs. Using WSUS, Faronics, and proper GPOs on the frozen machines we haven't had any problems with these post-feature update screens because we are approving the updates from WSUS anyway (as one should in a production environment) and can easily tell when the screens might appear.
It's all the OTHER random machines that are annoying (home, small sites, etc), because these screens would often cause the PC in question to not even load startup programs and some services.
It's gotten less bad with newer versions and if you have that many PCs, you should have an AD infrastructure in place already where this shouldn't be an issue. Check your WSUS and other GPO settings, especially the ones tailored to your frozen machines.

[#17]

Thanks LastWraith,
We are a smaller Non-Profit.
We have a WSUS server, used for Public & Staff PC's.
But these public PC's aren't in AD, so no group policy.

I'll need to talk to the boss about taking this to the next level, kick it up a notch.

Thanks

[#18]

@MeisterBurger 

I know it's not your decision but that doesn't seem very smart. With the discounts available to non-profits via TechSoup and other places, there is no reason not to have everything in AD where you can manage it more easily, especially when you are up over 100+ PCs.

If it's anything like here, the public machines can all have one (automatic) logon via GPO so you would potentially only be paying for 1 User CAL via TechSoup (or whoever). That works out to $4 to manage all your AD-joined public PCs if they are using the same login.

Of course if you have more than 50 devices AND more than 50 users that need to be licensed with CALs for accessing Windows Server devices....TechSoup may not have a cheap off-the-shelf answer. But at that point you can (and probably should) be in touch with an MS rep to figure something out. Their pricing is still usually very kind to non-profits.

[#19]

greedy people at Microsoft want you to spend money on there products. the windows setup screen is basically an advertising screen for office 365 and one drive and they think people are to stupid to see though it

[#20]

This is a dark pattern. They have hidden the settings to disable marketing in a weakly-travelled settings page. This experience has catalyzed a search for Linux alternatives, considering we have now *paid* over 300CAD each for degenerate, privacy violating software. Microsoft can only gouge Win32 and DirectX for so long before folks have had enough.