The Latest Windows 11 Update Gets Rid Of The Start Menu And Explorer …

But Not In A Good Way

Microsoft’s efforts to convince people to switch to Windows 11 continues to be spectacularly hilarious, at least for those who still have a working computer.  While many of their updates are focused on making the average user miserable, they occasionally like to remind Enterprise customers that they too are in Microsoft’s sights.  The latest kerfuffle will only be seen by Enterprise users running Windows 11 24H2 or 25H2 who have a July 2025 cumulative update installed as well.  It seems that the latest patch will render many components that depend on XAML from launching properly.

Those components include little used things like the Start Menu, the taskbar and Explorer.exe.  It is rather easy to tell if your update went wrong as you will boot into a black screen or the machine will simply crash the moment Explorer.exe launches.  Those with a little more luck will get to their desktop, but there’s a decent chance that desktop will lack a taskbar and the Start Menu won’t load even if you use the Windows key on your keyboard.

At the moment the only fix is likely a reimage, unless you can get to the registry to make some edits or deploy a Powershell script to delay the launch of Explorer.exe until the system is ready for it.