General question: Has anyone ever experienced this: immediately after resetting a Windows password using a WinPE/password-reset USB, the next boot shows a black pre-desktop screen with download/install/configuration-style messages for several minutes, and only then boots normally into Windows? In my specific case, this happened on a brand-new preinstalled Windows 8 64 bit PC, Gigabyte H61 / i3-3220 / GT 640 era. First boot showed normal Windows 8 “Hi” OOBE (Out of box experience) screen. I created a user/password and entered Windows. Soon after, I used a WinPE/offline password-reset USB. At a later reboot, before the normal desktop appeared, I saw a one-time black-screen/text-mode setup/download/install or reconfiguration phase that lasted several minutes. After that, the system felt radically different and much lower latency until the disk was later formatted. Could this have been an OEM post-OOBE finalization, RunOnce/FirstLogon task, driver re-enumeration, Gigabyte recovery/factory finalizer, UEFI/GPT vs Legacy/MBR recovery mismatch, third party loader script or compromised usb media? Has anyone seen this kind of Windows 8 OEM one-time pre-desktop setup phase?