Windows 11 has been hit by a whole load of bugs in recent times, with the move to version 24H2, as you’ve probably noticed – but the more positive news is that Microsoft is busy fixing a fair few of those gremlins in the works.
We’ve got evidence of this courtesy of the latest preview release of Windows 11 pushed out to the Dev channel, namely build 26120.2213.
Microsoft lists the work underway in terms of bug fixing in the usual blog post, and while there’s a whole lot of resolving glitches going on, some of it’s more mundane – so let’s pick out some of the highlights.
A notable bug we’ve recently reported has hit Task Manager, resulting in it showing that there are zero apps and processes running on the host PC – which, of course, can never happen (otherwise Windows 11 itself wouldn’t be working, never mind anything else). Microsoft informs us that it has resolved this issue where Task Manager is claiming a zero count for running processes.
On top of that, an ‘underlying issue’ with the most recent 24H2 preview that meant some games were completely failing to launch has been cured here.
Multiple bugs with the Windows 11 Start menu have been fixed with build 26120, including one where people were seeing a large amount of spacing between the apps present in the menu’s list of applications. There also a broad cure for an issue “impacting Start menu reliability” we’re told.
There’s a similar problem with File Explorer where items in the navigation pane were also becoming too spread out, with too much spacing between them for some users, and this has been remedied too. A more minor issue where RAW images taken in portrait mode were displaying in landscape mode with File Explorer’s thumbnails has also been fixed.
Furthermore, Microsoft has applied a clutch of fixes for various minor problems with the taskbar, including a glitch where the ‘X’ button to close a window off the taskbar preview (that pops up when you hover over the app on the bar) wasn’t working.
Analysis: It’s all about the bug squashing
This preview release of Windows 11 is notable because there’s hardly anything at all here in terms of feature additions (just a minor change for the IME toolbar which won’t make any difference to most users).
Almost all of this build is about fixing bugs, and aside from that, there are a couple of known issues flagged which haven’t yet been resolved. One of those is the bugs with the new gamepad keyboard layout for Windows 11 users that have meant it has been put on ice for the time being, and the other is a problem where those running multiple monitors are seeing corruption with their desktop background (with “big black areas” appearing mysteriously).
Microsoft is still working on the cures for those issues, and a fair few other problems besides that are affecting the latest incarnation of its desktop OS. To say Windows 11 24H2 has got off to a rocky start in terms of bugs is something of an understatement, in fact, but it does appear that Microsoft is working hard to firefight these various problems.