Home windows 11 replace breaks PCs that dare sport a customized UI

The huge replace to Home windows 11 rolled out this week is proving to be a headache for customers who’re working some third-party UI customization functions on their units.

Microsoft stated that after making use of the KB5022913 February 2023 non-security preview replace – additionally referred to as Second 2 – Home windows programs with a few of these UI instruments put in will not work in any respect as anticipated.

“Home windows units with some third-party UI customization apps won’t begin up,” the IT titan famous on the Home windows Well being Dashboard web site.

“These third-party apps would possibly trigger errors with explorer.exe that may repeat a number of occasions in a loop. Some of these apps usually use unsupported strategies to realize their customization and in consequence can have unintended outcomes in your Home windows machine.”

ExplorerPatcher and StartAllBack are two of the UI customizations apps caught up in borkage, in accordance with the software program purveyor, though within the latter case getting essentially the most present construct might repair the difficulty. The issue solely results programs working Home windows 11 22H2. Home windows Server isn’t affected.

ExplorerPatcher is an open-source program for each Home windows 10 and 11 that ship a variety of customization choices for the Home windows machine’s desktop, together with restoring the basic Home windows 10 taskbar to Home windows 11 units to including or eradicating options.

An issue between Home windows 11 and ExplorerPatcher has been talked about in a GitHub discussion board since at the least late January. StartAllBack is the same software that provides Home windows 11 customers the power to “restore and enhance” every part from the taskbar and Begin menu to File Discover, the management panel, and context menus.

Microsoft is providing a workaround for now and it is fairly blunt, recommending that you simply uninstall any third-party UI customization apps earlier than loading the KB5022913 replace onto the programs.

“In case your Home windows machine is already experiencing this challenge, you would possibly must contact buyer assist for the developer of the app you’re utilizing,” the corporate wrote. “In case you are utilizing StartAllBack, you would possibly be capable to stop this challenge by updating to the most recent model (v3.5.6 or later).”

It is unclear how – or whether or not – this challenge will likely be resolved. Microsoft stated it’s investing the issue and “will present extra data when it’s accessible.” These utilizing any of those apps who encounter issues must contact buyer assist for the developer of the offending app.

The February 2023 replace is an optionally available launch that will not robotically be loaded however might be put in manually. Among the many new options are a shortcut to Bing’s AI chatbot being put within the taskbar and Cellphone Hyperlink for iOS so iPhone customers can join on to the Home windows units.

It additionally contains tabs in Notepad, a touch-optimized taskbar for 2-in-1 units, and enhanced assist for braille programs. ®