It’s Halloween and while some people are getting a treat, others are getting new Windows 11 24H2 related issues – this time a glitch in the Task Manager. Microsoft has confirmed this, but thankfully it’s reportedly not as concerning as other recent 24H2 issues.
Microsoft’s recognition of the fault was spotted by Neowin in a new notification in the Windows 11 24H2 Health Dashboard, which catalogs the issues and other important things that Microsoft published about the new feature update. Normally, the Task Manager lists how many apps and background tasks are currently running on your device, so you can quickly see what’s taking up your computer’s resources.
Neowin explains that after installing the latest build version of 24H2, KB5044384, some users were shown the incorrect number of apps and background processes, with Task Manager claiming that there are no apps or processes running – which is impossible.
What this means and what you should pay attention to next
If this sounds familiar, there are two things to be aware of. Firstly, we don’t currently know if there is a simple solution to this. Secondly, it doesn’t appear that this outage affects Task Manager’s functionality much further. You can still do things like view all the programs, apps and processes you have running, check their details and stop them if necessary, even if the group headers indicate that no apps and processes are running.
Microsoft’s acknowledgment also states that it is working on a fix and I expect it will be added to a future update soon.
As far as we know, this only affects those using Windows 11 24H2 and if you are using an earlier version of Windows such as 23H2, this should not affect you. Moreover, this is apparently just a visual glitch and the functioning of Task Manager and your PC are also not affected.
This Task Manager bug is another item on the list of issues we’ve heard about since the release of Windows 11 24H2 – including network connection issues and blue screens of death. This isn’t the most extreme mistake, but it undermines the entire purpose of the Task Manager, which is meant to provide a clear and easy-to-interpret overview of all your running apps and background processes. Updates like 24H2 aim to provide improved stability and introduce new features, and as new bugs continue to pop up, that’s less and less likely to be the impression users get when they try to use it.