diff --git a/docs/manual-checks.md b/docs/manual-checks.md
index c0e77e9..e5dde21 100644
--- a/docs/manual-checks.md
+++ b/docs/manual-checks.md
@@ -256,8 +256,8 @@ registered in the capture phase, that no native menu is drawn once it is prevent
 
 Close DodoSSH and start it again. Watch the first second.
 
-**Pass:** a small panel — about 420 pixels wide, no titlebar — appears saying **DodoSSH** and *Starting…*
-with a bar moving under it, and is then replaced by the main window. Measured on a debug build against a cold
+**Pass:** a small panel — about 420 pixels wide, no titlebar — appears saying **DodoSSH** and *Starting…*,
+and is then replaced by the main window. Measured on a debug build against a cold
 profile: the panel at 668 ms, the window at 3.1 s. A release install is quicker and the shape is the same.
 What must never come back is the old behaviour, which was nothing at all on screen for the whole of it.
 
@@ -270,8 +270,12 @@ over whatever you gave up and went back to.
 *directory* where `cache.db` should be — `%LOCALAPPDATA%\DodoSSH.Nightly\cache.db` for the nightly — and
 start the application.
 
-**Pass:** the panel stays, the bar stops moving, and it reads *DodoSSH could not start:* followed by the
-reason and *Press Escape to close.* Escape closes it. Remove the directory afterwards.
+**Pass:** the panel stays and the line becomes *DodoSSH could not start:* followed by the reason and
+*Press Escape to close.* Escape closes it. Remove the directory afterwards.
+
+There is deliberately nothing else on the card to contradict that line — the progress bar this check used to
+describe was taken off in "Take the frozen bar off the splash, and leave the line that is true", because an
+indeterminate bar over a composition that had stopped was the one thing a splash must never do.
 
 **Failure means:** a panel left saying *Starting…* is the main window having failed to show with nothing
 catching it, which is the one outcome worse than the crash it replaced — `DodoSshApp.ComposeBehind` exists to