- More bugs have been discovered in Windows 11’s December update
- They include some annoying issues where the Start menu falls over
- There’s a fix for the Start Menu issue that most users are likely to encounter, but only tech-savvy people need to apply it
Microsoft’s December 2024 Update for Windows 11 has reportedly been introduced even more frustrating problems for some users, including a bug that makes the Start menu unresponsive.
These issues, and some others, have been reported for cumulative updates KB5048667 for Windows 11 24H2 and KB5048685 for Windows 11 23H2, according to Windows Latest.
There appear to be a few separate issues with the Windows 11 Start menu, the first of which is a visual glitch where the search theme for the menu incorrectly displays in white when the user has a dark theme in Windows.
As a dark theme user I could see this being very annoying and clearly visually inconsistent, although it’s not certain this is a widespread bug in any way.
What’s more worrying is that it appears to have bugs that break the Start menu after applying the said updates.
Windows Latest explains that the Start menu may stop working completely if Windows 11 detects that your system has an older version of a certain DLL file (MSVCP_140_APP.dll).
The tech site suggests one possible solution that requires updating this packagebut I would only recommend this if you are really confident you know what you are doing. Otherwise, if it bothers you, the only other way out is to scrap the December 2024 Update, or put up with a non-functional Start menu until Microsoft investigates (and hopefully implements a fix).
There’s another bug in Windows 11 that apparently causes the Start menu to fall over in the same way, but the average user won’t encounter this as it only affects Citrix users (in enterprises) who have Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI ) to use. . That problem is up to the IT administrators to solve.
More bugs in the latest Windows 11 update
There are other issues with these Windows 11 December patches that have been reported by individual users.
One of these is the ‘Safely Remove Hardware’ icon that remains constant on the taskbar, and an otherwise isolated report claims that the screen looks dull after installing Windows 11 23H2 KB5048685. That would be in the HDR related issues that Microsoft recently confirmedmaybe.
It is mainly the problems with the Start menu that are of concern here, because it is a crucial part of Windows 11 that is difficult to avoid completely. Of reports of many bugs lately, especially with Windows 11 24H2it seems like Microsoft needs to up its game and try to make cumulative updates more stable after release.
Hopefully the company will be quick and responsive when it comes to investigating and then resolving this latest set of reported issues.