Seeing a blank white window pop up in the top-left corner of your screen every time you sign in or unlock your PC? The good news is that this is a known problem with a quick blank white window Windows fix: the cause has been tracked down, and the workaround takes about a minute. The empty box comes from a Google Chrome background task, and disabling that one task in Windows Task Scheduler makes it go away — on both Windows 10 and Windows 11.

Here is what is happening, why it happens, and exactly how to stop it.

Person using a Windows 11 laptop at home
Image: Microsoft

What the blank white window looks like

The symptom is consistent across the reports. A blank, empty white window — some people describe it as ghostly because it has no text, no buttons, and no title — appears right after you sign in, unlock the machine, or restart it. It is usually anchored to the upper-left corner of the desktop and covers a fair chunk of the screen, blocking whatever is behind it until you click it away. Sometimes it vanishes on its own after a few seconds; other times it lingers until you interact with it.

It is not a virus and it is not your display driver failing. It is a rendering glitch tied to a specific piece of Chrome.

What is causing the blank white window on Windows

The trigger is a scheduled task that Google Chrome registers on your PC. It is named exactly RunPlatformExperienceHelperOnUnlock, and it lives in Windows Task Scheduler inside a folder called GoogleUserPEH.

That task runs Chrome’s “Platform Experience Helper,” a background component that normally handles interactions between Chrome and outside pieces like extensions, plugins, and update routines. Part of its job is to show a Windows UAC-style elevation prompt when a Chrome update needs administrator rights. The bug is in the drawing of that prompt: instead of rendering a proper window with text and buttons — or closing cleanly when nothing needs your attention — the pipeline paints only an empty container. That empty container is the blank white box you keep seeing.

Worth knowing before you touch anything: neither Google nor Microsoft has officially acknowledged or patched this yet. What follows is a community-identified workaround pieced together by outlets and forum users, not an official fix. Google does not fully document what this task does internally, so treat it as an unofficial remedy. It has been reported widely — Neowin flagged it first, with PCWorld, Windows Report and others corroborating within a couple of days — so it is a genuine, repeatable pattern rather than one person’s odd PC.

How to fix the blank white window on Windows 10 and 11

The fix is the same on both Windows 10 and Windows 11: you disable the offending task. You are not deleting anything, and you can re-enable it later if you ever want to.

  1. Press Windows key + R to open the Run dialog.
  2. Type taskschd.msc and press Enter to open Task Scheduler.
  3. In the left pane, expand: Task Scheduler (Local) > Task Scheduler Library > GoogleUserPEH.
  4. In the middle pane, find the task named RunPlatformExperienceHelperOnUnlock.
  5. Right-click it and choose Disable. Check that the Status column changes from “Ready” to “Disabled”.
  6. Restart the PC, or simply lock and unlock it, to confirm — the white window should no longer appear.

Users who have applied this report no side effects. The task only handles background Chrome maintenance prompts; it is not something normal browsing depends on, so disabling it does not break Chrome.

If Chrome is not your main browser, there is a second option: uninstalling Chrome removes the task along with it. But that is the heavy-handed route — disabling the single task is the simpler, non-destructive choice, so try that first.

One catch: the fix may not be permanent

Because this is a workaround and not a patch, keep one thing in mind. A future Chrome update could silently re-register or re-enable the RunPlatformExperienceHelperOnUnlock task. If that happens, the blank white window can come back, and you would simply repeat the steps above to disable it again. Until Google or Microsoft ships a real fix, that is the trade-off.

If you are the kind of person who keeps a running list of Windows 11 annoyances to clean up, this pairs well with another recent one we covered — a Windows 11 storage bug that can quietly eat up to 500GB and how to check for it.

Sources: PCWorld, Neowin, Windows Report