Your PC is not broken and your update did not fail. That blue screen is a suggestion list Windows reopens whenever it finds unfinished business, and most of the items on it lead to a Microsoft account, a subscription or a default app change.
The most misleading thing about the Lets finish setting up your device screen is its timing. It appears right after an update, full-screen, before your desktop, so it feels like part of the update, like something that must be completed before work can start. It is not. It is a standing checklist of optional extras that Windows re-offers whenever it gets the chance. This page walks through what the screen is, what each item on it is really offering, and why the only button that looks like an exit, Remind me in 3 days, guarantees you will see it again.
Nothing on this screen reports a fault. Windows keeps a list of optional setup items it wishes every PC had completed, and after an update it checks the list again. If items are still open, your sign-in is interrupted by the checklist. That is why the screen appears even on a perfectly healthy PC, and why it appears for local accounts too: a local account is itself one of the unfinished items, because the first suggestion is to switch to a Microsoft account. The screen is doing its designed job. The design is the problem, not your computer.
Read the checklist honestly and it is a shop window. Signing in with a Microsoft account connects the PC to Microsoft's services. The PIN is genuinely convenient and reasonably secure, but it also deepens that connection. OneDrive backup is a paid-storage product once you pass the free space. Microsoft 365 is a subscription, usually offered as a trial. Phone linking and the Edge default suggestion pull your browsing and phone activity into Microsoft's apps. None of this is sinister, and some of it is useful, but it is marketing presented as setup. You are not behind on homework; you are being offered products, kindly but persistently, at the exact moment you wanted your desktop.
The screen offers two buttons and neither of them is No. Continue walks you through the checklist. Remind me in 3 days dismisses the screen while leaving every item open, so the next update (or simply a later sign-in) is entitled to show it again. In the video, this is the detail users find hardest to believe: senior staff keep pressing the reminder and keep calling IT after the next update, convinced something new has broken. Nothing new has broken. The screen is patient because it is designed to be.
You can end the screen in either of two legitimate ways. The first is to finish the checklist for real: people who use a Microsoft account, a PIN and OneDrive see the screen rarely because few items remain open, though new suggestions can still be added by later updates. The second is to withdraw permission: switch off the Suggest ways to get the most out of Windows and finish setting up this device toggle, or apply the registry value through the one click script from the video, and Windows stops presenting the checklist whether its items are done or not. The second way is the only one fully in your control.
Watch the video to see the script route that switches this screen off in one click, the way it is done on user PCs before they are handed over.
Watch Full VideoBecause a local account is itself one of the unfinished items. The first suggestion on the checklist is signing in with a Microsoft account, so local account users are exactly the people the screen is aimed at, and they tend to see it most often.
Mostly, yes, because few items remain open. But Windows can add new suggestions in later feature updates, so even a fully completed checklist is not a lifetime guarantee. Switching the suggestion toggle off is the permanent answer.
The dismiss button is a reminder, not a refusal, so by its own design the screen returns. Windows does provide the real opt-out in Settings, and using it is fully legitimate. This guide and the video simply point at that opt-out.