Windows 11 April update triggers "death loops" and bizarre pixelated crashes

It has been just five days since Microsoft released its April Patch Tuesday update (KB5083769) and already people are starting to report more issues on Microsoft’s Learn Q&A pages. One that stood out was the update being suspected of creating a “death loop” for several users. It’s unclear how many people are experiencing these death loops but aside from the poster, one commenter said they were having the same issue and so were three other people in their company.

The poster, who goes by the name Vagabond Superstar, said they attempted to install the Patch Tuesday update for April, but their PC got stuck in a “death loop” (similar to the bug on Windows Server perhaps) where the screen shows a “mosaic of weird pixels” followed by a blue screen saying that Windows needs to be recovered. The user was then given an option to retry, but after attempting this, the computer went into a boot loop where it kept giving the message that it was attempting to repair the issue, then it would loop back through the pixelated screens.

Vagabond Superstar notes that their PC is a HP Pavillion 590-p0044. It has an AMD Ryzen 5 2600, 32GB RAM, GTX 1080ti GPU, and is running Windows 11 Home. Another commenter, who goes by the name “L M”, said they’re having exactly the same problem on a Dell Desktop and describes the pixelated screen and repairs similar to what the original poster said they experienced.

The final commenter to report the same issue was Thomas B who said they’ve been experiencing the same thing and so are another three people in their company who are no longer able to boot into Windows, potentially preventing them from accessing important work documents. Thomas B noted that they were able to uninstall the latest “Quality” update and get back into their system, but one of the users had a recovery environment that was so broken, they couldn’t get back into their system.

It isn’t clear if this issue is being caused directly by Microsoft or if there is some common driver or software issue affecting all of these users. Microsoft’s Q&A Assist, which is AI-generated, says that similar issues have been documented when a cumulative/security update corrupts boot-critical components or drivers, especially on some AMD-based systems.

It recommends going into the Window Recovery Environment, attempting a System Restore, then a Startup Repair, then a Local reinstall if the first two recommendations fail. You can find its detailed answer in the post’s comments section.