Thanks — I hear you. Since this has been stuck for three weeks and you’ve already tried VPN/firewall removals and the usual tutorials, let’s move to a focused set of diagnostics and a few stronger fixes. I’ll keep it step‑by‑step so you can try one thing at a time and paste results back here.
First — the 2 quick things I need right away
- Run winver (press Windows+R, type winver, Enter) and paste the exact text it shows (Windows edition and build).
- Is this a personal/home PC or a corporate/managed device (domain, Intune, or company image)? Also tell me whether you have an ESU product key (yes / no / don’t know).
Then try these steps in order:
A — Very quick checks (if you haven’t already)
- Confirm system date/time is correct and synced (clock in taskbar).
- Sign out of your account and sign back in (or reboot).
- Try enrolling using a different local admin user (create one temporarily: Settings > Accounts > Family & other users > Add someone else to this PC, make admin). Does the dialog still hang?
- Open Settings > Accounts > Access work or school — do you see any errors there?
B — Reset the Settings app (safe, often fixes hung Settings dialogs)
- If you can open Settings normally: Settings > Apps > Apps & features > find “Settings” (or “Windows Settings”), click it > Advanced options > Reset. Then try the enrollment again.
- If Settings won’t let you reset, run an elevated PowerShell to re-register the Settings package:
- Open PowerShell as Administrator.
- Run:
powershell -Command "Get-AppxPackage immersivecontrolpanel | % { Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register \"$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml\" }"
- Reboot and try again.
Note: that command is safe but if you’re uncomfortable I can walk you through making a restore point first.
C — Clean boot (rules out conflicting apps/services)
- Press Windows+R → msconfig → on the Services tab check “Hide all Microsoft services” → click Disable all.
- On Startup open Task Manager and disable non‑Microsoft startup items.
- Reboot and try the enrollment again. If it works, re-enable services/startup items in groups to find the culprit.
D — Network / time / service resets (common causes)
Open an elevated Command Prompt and run these (paste any errors you see):
- net stop wuauserv
- net stop bits
- net stop cryptsvc
- netsh winsock reset
- ipconfig /flushdns
- w32tm /resync
- net start cryptsvc
- net start bits
- net start wuauserv
Reboot and try the enrollment.
E — Collect the logs we need to debug (if it still hangs)
- In an elevated PowerShell run:
Get-WindowsUpdateLog -LogPath C:\Temp\WindowsUpdate.log
Attach C:\Temp\WindowsUpdate.log here (or paste the final ~100 lines).
- Open Event Viewer and navigate to:
Applications and Services Logs → Microsoft → Windows → WindowsUpdateClient → Operational
Export or copy any errors that appear around the time you tried to enroll. Also check System and Application for errors at that time. Paste the Event IDs/messages.
- Run these and paste outputs (in an elevated CMD):
sc query wuauserv
sc query bits
sc query wuasvc
(these show whether the services are running and their state)
F — If this is an ESU licensing/activation issue
- ESU enrollment sometimes stalls if prerequisites (specific KB updates/SSU or a product key) are missing or if the device is not eligible. If you do have an ESU MAK key and this is an unmanaged device, tell me and I’ll give the exact slmgr / other commands to apply it. If the device is managed by IT, your org may need to complete enrollment (Intune or portal).
G — If you want deeper tracing (only if comfortable)
- We can run Process Monitor (Procmon) while you reproduce the hang to capture which process or registry call is waiting. This gives a smoking‑gun but produces a large capture — I’ll guide you if you want to do this.
What to post back here
- The winver text (exact edition + build).
- Whether PC is managed and whether you have an ESU key.
- Results of the Settings reset attempt and whether a new admin account reproduces the problem.
- The WindowsUpdate.log (or last 100 lines) and any Event Viewer error IDs/messages.
- Outputs of sc query commands above.
If you prefer I can give a compressed checklist you can run start‑to‑finish and paste one combined log file (WindowsUpdate.log + Event Viewer exports). Tell me which you prefer and I’ll post that exact checklist/commands.