Microsoft has pushed a server-side repair for a identified concern that broke the Home windows Begin Menu search function on some Home windows 11 23H2 units.
In a Home windows launch well being replace (WI1273488) seen by BleepingComputer, Microsoft mentioned these issues have affected solely a small variety of customers since April 6 and are attributable to a server-side Bing replace geared toward bettering search efficiency.
Whereas the corporate says these issues are current, there have been studies of comparable points surfacing on-line for months, together with claims that the Begin Menu shows clean search outcomes which might be nonetheless clickable.
To deal with this identified concern, Microsoft has pulled the buggy Bing replace and expects the search points to subside because the repair rolls out to affected prospects.
“An investigation decided that the issue coincided with a server-side Bing replace designed to enhance search efficiency. To mitigate the difficulty, the server-side Bing replace was rolled again, and studies of search failures are steadily reducing,” Microsoft mentioned.
“This concern will resolve routinely because the server-side repair is step by step rolled out to affected units. To obtain this repair, be sure the gadget is related to the web and that Net Search has not been disabled by Group Coverage.”
Extra Home windows Begin Menu points
This is not the primary identified Begin Menu concern to influence Home windows prospects lately. In November, Microsoft shared a short lived workaround for an additional bug that was inflicting the Begin Menu, File Explorer, and different key system parts to crash when provisioning programs with cumulative updates launched since July 2025, as a result of XAML packages not registering in time after putting in the replace.
On impacted programs, affected customers expertise a variety of issues, together with Begin menu crashes and important error messages, lacking taskbars even when Explorer is working, crashes of the core ShellHost (Shell Infrastructure Host or Home windows Shell Expertise Host) system course of, and Settings app silently failing to launch.
Microsoft remains to be engaged on creating a everlasting repair, however hasn’t offered a timeline for when an answer might be out there. In the meantime, affected prospects should manually register the lacking XAML packages.
In Could, Microsoft additionally silently fastened a difficulty that broke Begin Menu leap lists for all apps on Home windows 10 22H2 programs, and in June 2023, it addressed a bug that brought about Home windows Search and the Begin Menu to turn into unresponsive.
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