Did you notice that Windows 11 is getting more and more bugs? Microsoft is rolling out a slew of bug fixes with a new preview build, combating some truly strange issues
- New preview for Windows 11 is almost entirely about bug fixes
- Bugs, especially strange glitches, seem to have become more common since 24H2
- Microsoft is doing its best to solve all these different problems
Microsoft is busy fixing a slew of bugs in Windows 11, and that’s clearly illustrated by the work in the latest preview build for the operating system, which is almost entirely focused on ironing out issues – many of which we’ve seen with the new 24H2 update, of course.
In fact, Windows 11 build 27749 for the Canary Channel only has one change that isn’t a bug fix, where Narrator gets a new keyboard shortcut (“Narrator Key + Control + X”) that copies what was last spoken by the screen-reading tool to the clipboard. Also, Narrator now works to automatically read emails in the new Outlook app, just like the classic app.
Next, let’s discuss Microsoft’s troubleshooting work in this build, keeping in mind that the Narrator capabilities are still in testing, as are the bug fixes – albeit with one notable exception.
That’s the fix for a bug where the Task Manager incorrectly tells the user that there are no processes and apps running – which is of course impossible, since the OS itself is built on a lot of background processes – as this has also been fixed with the cumulative update for the full version of Windows 11 in November. That Patch Tuesday update fixes another weird bug where Alt-Tabbing to switch between apps causes a long pause and black screen before the app you switch to appears on the desktop – and an issue where the internet connection went down on some PCs .
Back to preview build 27749, which also fixes some issues with core parts of the Windows 11 interface. That includes File Explorer overspreading the contents of the navigation pane (with extra space between them), as well as some refinement of the taskbar. Microsoft notes that this is the case: “A change has been made so that you now see a search box if the taskbar is automatically hidden when the taskbar search setting is set to ‘Search box; (instead of an icon).”
Additionally, there is a fix for a strange issue where there is a blank entry present in the Privacy Panel in the Settings app, and when clicked it causes Settings to crash. Microsoft also fixed an issue where Windows 11 turned the volume on “certain audio devices” to maximum, which undoubtedly caused a rude awakening after your PC came out of sleep (or it could also happen on first boot).
Narrator also received a number of fixes, including fixing an issue where performance slowed down after 15 minutes of continuous use in one app.
There are a number of other miscellaneous solutions here that Microsoft lists in the usual way blog post.
Analysis: The current prevalence of weird bugs
What is clear is that there is a growing theme of Windows 11 being hit with some very strange bugs since the 24H2 update arrived on the scene. The weird spacing in the interface you see in File Explorer, zero processes showing up in the Task Manager, that blank item in Settings that causes a crash, your audio suddenly boosted to full volume, and many more strange glitches besides (that menu disappears at the top from the desktop I think too).
Normally these kinds of bizarre issues are relatively rare, but it seems like they’ve become more common since the release of Windows 11 24H2, both in the update itself, and as we see here, in preview builds. It’s our theory that the big change to a new underlying platform in Windows 11 – Germanium – could have some side effects that we see manifested in these stranger types of bugs.
Hopefully, this series of quality assurance turbulence will start to calm down soon enough, and as we can see from the long laundry list of fixes in the latest preview, Microsoft is busy doing a lot of firefighting to resolve these multiple issues. We’ve seen other preview updates in recent times where a large part of the work involves bug fixes, and honestly, this era of increased bugginess goes back further than the new version 24H2. Overall, 2024 was a rough year for Windows 11.
All of this seems to broadly point to a need for Microsoft to get a better handle on QA and testing processes for Windows 11, something that some people have been mulling over for a while (ourselves included). In any case, the good news about 24H2 is that it’s a big piece of work – in terms of the aforementioned new Germanium platform supporting the operating system – and we haven’t seen any major, glaring bugs (yet). There’s just a lot of weird cockroaches running around.