windows 8.1 hangs on Please Wait screen (restoreoptin)

Anonymous
2013-10-19T03:11:39+00:00

When logging in, a Please Wait screen shows up along with a Cancel button. I tried letting it sit there for more than half an hour but nothing happens. I noticed the application is letterboxed and I can use Win+D to see that the desktop show up. The screen stays on top blocking all mouse activity and most of my screen.

Eventually I logged into another account and found restoreoptin running and terminated it. That removed it from my original account however it will do it again if I log out and log back in.

Any ideas?

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Performance and system failures

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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Anonymous
2013-10-25T17:25:19+00:00

<Modifying post to help other find the answer quickly>

I found another workaround that allows for still using skydrive, and further confirms the relationship to skydrive setup.

(This is the method I used)

  1. login to the affected account
  2. Press Windows Key + L to lock the computer
  3. Switch to a user account with administrator priveledges
  4. open task manager & switch to the "Processes" tab (Press "More Details" if don't see a processes tab)
  5. find restoreoptin.exe & end task that process
  6. switch back to affected account (Start Page, click your account name/picture, click the account you want to switch to)
  7. Open Charm menu (windows key + C), select "Settings", then Change PC Settings
  8. Select Skydrive
  9. Modify the File Storage, Camera Roll, and Sync Settings (not sure which one does the trick)
  10. logout & log back in
  11. you should no longer be prompted with the blank 'please wait' screen

Another workaround that should achieve the same, as posted by others:

  1. login to the affected account
  2. Press Windows Key + r
  3. Type:

taskkill /f /im restoreoptin.exe 4. Open Charm menu (windows key + C), select "Settings", then Change PC Settings 5. Select Skydrive 6. Modify the File Storage, Camera Roll, and Sync Settings (not sure which one does the trick) 7. logout & log back in 8. you should no longer be prompted with the blank 'please wait' screen

and just for completeness, you could also try:

  1. login to the affected account
  2. Press: Windows Key + r

Type:

taskkill /f /im restoreoptin.exe 3. Press: Windows Key + x

Press: a

Press: <Alt + Y>

(run cmd as administrator) 4. Type:

cd c:\windows\system32

restoreOptIn.exe /Ramp
  1. Complete the Wizard

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Anonymous
2014-01-03T18:25:43+00:00

I fixed it much more simply. I had to recently rebuild my dell xps 27 and started with 8.0. Setup everyone's account since I have a home network and domain setup. Then upgraded, I ran into the same issue as everyone here in the post. What I had to do to fix is is unassociated all the windows live/Hotmail/outlook accounts from the domain accounts and then re-apply them. This then asked me to verify that the account has permissions to skydrive, and asked for verification. Texted me, I put in the verification code and it was fixed on all accounts. Someone also mentioned making it a local account and then reassigning to your windows account. Seems to fix it as well.

Steps for Domain accounts:

  1. Remove association from your windows account
  2. Re-add your windows account
  3. verify that the pc has permissions to back up your info to sky drive/turn off sync with sky drive.

Windows Account:

  1. Make it a local account
  2. Re-add your windows account
  3. Verify that the pc has permissions to backup your info to sky drive/turn off sync with sky drive.

Appears to be a bug in the 8.1 upgrade where the pc and sky drive trust is broken, it didn't happen until I received a windows update, but I could see this happening if you download the patches during the upgrade process.

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180 additional answers

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  1. Anonymous
    2015-01-15T01:05:33+00:00

    "Matt\_Still

    and just for completeness, you could also try:

    1. login to the affected account
    2. Press: Windows Key + r

    Type:

    taskkill /f /im restoreoptin.exe 3. Press: Windows Key + x

    Press: a

    Press: <Alt + Y>

    (run cmd as administrator) 4. Type:

    cd c:\windows\system32

    restoreOptIn.exe /Ramp
    
    1. Complete the Wizard"

    The steps above worked perfectly for me.  Thank you!

    If you are still following this thread, it would be great to hear from you in about a month to see whether the issue recurred after an additional Windows Update or two have taken place. 

    If the issue does not recur, it would be great to know whether you have an Nvidia video card and whether you are using Nvidia's update program or Windows Update to update the drivers on it. 

    There is reason to believe the issue might be associated with Windows Update selecting the wrong Nvidia drivers, while Nvidia's update program seems to resolve the issue by perhaps selecting the best drivers.

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-02-01T17:32:05+00:00

    In my experience (and from following along with others) this is a 1 time problem & if you can get through the OneDrive / SkyDrive setup, the problem does not ever recur. In My Opinion, as frustrating as this bug is, it is well worth getting it fixed & reap all the benefits of the tighter integration in windows 8.1. This thread details out several viable solutions to work around the problem & as much as I would like to see some sort of patch to be pushed to machines in this state, it seems unlikely given the narrow # of people that have run into this issue (vs # of people that either never had this problem, or worked around it and never looked back) & the impending release of windows 10.

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  3. Anonymous
    2015-02-01T20:58:58+00:00

    I agree with fixing the issue and going through the effort of running win 8.1 and OneDrive - it's a bit frustrating that this common issue is still a problem though and hope Microsoft will fix it as its sending a bad message to people new to windows 8 and certainly not going to help market share.

    Anyway, just to give all an update, my new Lenovo laptop had a had failure, so I had to reinstall windows 8.1 last week. I've updated my nvidia drivers and did all win 8.1 updates prior to proceeding creating other accounts...very disappointed that I STILL had to fix this issue!!! Far out, ridiculous!

    That said, I fixed the issue this time by essentially killing the process from another account, switching back to the troublesome new account and tweaking various one drive settings - I wont repeat these steps as its already documented in this thread.

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