Microsoft finally admits almost all major Windows 11 core features are broken

neowin ^ | 11 20 2025 | Sayan Sen

[yesthatjallen]

It has been a troublesome week or two for Microsoft, for sure. Earlier today, the company fixed a Microsoft 365 outage that made files unusable; downtimes like this seem to happen on a fairly regular basis.

Meanwhile on the Windows side, it has probably been worse. The tech giant got blamed by Nvidia today as the latest Patch Tuesday is leading to performance issues in games. The GPU maker has released an emergency hotfix driver to resolve the problems.

This comes hot on the heels of the massive backlash that the company's Windows boss recently faced due to the evolution of the operating system into an agentic OS as unveiled earlier this week.

On the positive side though, following all that backlash, Microsoft acknowledged Windows has issues, and as if on cue, the company in a new support article has admitted that there are problems on almost every major Windows 11 core feature. The issues are related to XAML and this impacts all the Shell components like the Start Menu, Taskbar, Explorer, and Windows Settings.

Interestingly, while Microsoft is only acknowledging the issue in November 2025, this has been a problem since the July 2025 Patch Tuesday update (KB5062553), so that is four months. Also since Windows 11 25H2 shares the same codebase as version 24H2, the newest Windows 11 feature update is also impacted.

In the support article Microsoft explains:

"After provisioning a PC with a Windows 11, version 24H2 monthly cumulative update released on or after July 2025 (KB5062553), various apps such as StartMenuExperiencehost, Search, SystemSettings, Taskbar or Explorer might experience difficulties.

SNIP

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TOPICS:
KEYWORDS: core; microsoft; update; windows; windows11; windowspinglist

[butlerweave]

and all the things they say are for security are just to spy on you ,LOL

[Bayard]

I’m moving to Mint, soon, so windows can burn for all I care.

[The Duke]

I was about to reply that hot new computer is running wonderfully, but then I realized I was running Linux Mint on that device.

[SkyDancer]

Glad I’m still on Windows 7, one laptop is on W10 Pro which is okay.

[Libloather]

[Organic Panic]

I wish that were my case. I am stuck with MS as long as I have my business. No CAE, CAM, or CAD software ports outside windows.

[july4thfreedomfoundation]

I’m also still on 7.

[Fledermaus]

With 11 my camera only works half the time.

Doing diagnostics is useless.

[minnesota_bound]

Windows is spying on you and most people will not even know this. When Bitlocker shows up because of some problem most will not know their microsoft account or the bitlocker key. They have now lost everything on that pc.

BTW Microsoft has a master key and can turn it over to the police etc. but they will not use it to help you get into your pc to get your files, just the police.

Windows 11 Bitlocker isn’t there to Protect YOU
Rob Braxman Tech
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iX3a-goiE2c

[matt04]

I have Paralles on my Mac with Windows 11 for the times I need Windows apps.

[JZelle]

The Amish were right.

[Vision]

Theses dorks don’t know what a man and a woman are so what do you expect?

[dayglored]

Windows 11 Update... PING!

You can find all the Windows Ping list threads with FR search: just search on keyword "windowspinglist".

[SkyDancer]

My dad has the install disk for it. Good backup.

[bobbo666]

Any software subscription exposes you to “updates” that cripple you on Tuesdayand take ‘til Friday to kinda fix.

It has always been this way, but the sheep still flock to fling their money at the software companies peddling this caca.

[MayflowerMadam]

I have two on 7, and two on 10.

Although 10 seems to have a couple of nice features, I prefer 7 used that the most often.

I have MS Office 2003 on all of them.

[MikelTackNailer]

I’m going over tutorials for installing duel booting Linux Mint next to Windows 10 ioT Enterprise LTSC right now (guaranteed updates until 2032).

Was going to clean install over the computer’s drive (easiest way) but found that you can trick your current version of Windows 10 into thinking it’s getting a regular update through a few registry tweaks - thus replacing Home or Pro with LTSC while retaining all personal files, bookmarks and installed programs; bypassing having to reinstall all that stuff.

Fortunately I have a 15-year-old computer to goof up on before trying it on the newer one. Whichever way works best is way better than giving in to Redmond’s spyware posing as an operating system.

[dagunk]

Like my unixes.

Wife on Linux Mint. She likes it.

A couple of raspberry Pi4 machines running the Pi Linux.

Four FreeBSD machines , one doing the heavy lifting, the rest doing light duty.

One old Thinkpad T40 laptop running NetBSD. It’s a 32-bit machine I’m nursing along but it is basically obsolete. Gonna hold a wake for it when I turn it off the last time. (I could run Freedos on it - maybe.)

Hate running windows. I’m an old command-line warrior and windows just gets in my way. Flushed it 35 or 40 years ago and haven’t looked back.

That doesn’t count the job machines. When they broke I’d call the support guy and tell him “Hey come on down and fix this piece o’ shit. Got coffee on.” He was fun, understood windows support is job security.

[MikelTackNailer]

Forgot to post the video about it. Duh!

Switch Windows 10 to LTSC Without Losing Data

Whatever one does always make physical back-ups first. That little internet outage the other day was a good reminder of how dependable "the Cloud" really is.