Poof! The good old Start Menu is very much the marquee feature of the Windows platform. It is the most familiar, most used, most controversial, and most talked about element of the operating system.
And, occasionally, a feature that disappears.
Like in this instance.
Microsoft has confirmed that the latest cumulative update for Windows 11 could break the Start Menu. The good news is that the company has revealed that only a small number of devices are impacted by this new bug.
The update in question is KB5014668, and once it triggers the problem, there is no way for the user to launch the Start Menu.
As explained by the software titan:
“After installing KB5014668 or later updates, we have received reports that a small number of devices might be unable to open the Start menu. On affected devices, clicking or selecting the Start button, or using the Windows key on your keyboard might have no effect.”
As of result, the company has issued a Known Issue Rollback fix so that the Start Menu works correctly as intended on impacted devices.
The KIR resolution might take up to 24 hours to propagate automatically to consumer and non-managed business devices. But Redmond claims that restarting the device could help apply the fix faster in some cases.
If you are battling this problem, you might want to seek this workaround.
The next round of cumulative updates for Windows 11 is on track to go live as part of the August 2022 Patch Tuesday update cycle. This will customarily happen on the second Tuesday of next month, which, according to the calendar, falls on August 9.
