After turning our Windows 11 Beta PCs on today, we noticed that the taskbar and start menu failed to show up no matter how many times we shut down and restarted. It turns out that this is a widespread issue facing most Windows Insiders now.
Looking at the update notes released with each new Windows build Microsoft says it is aware of the issue and tells users to go into the settings app and roll back to a previous build. But if you if you have already tried that you know you can’t access any of the apps while your PC is in this broken state.
How to fix it
After searching around online we have a found a few ways to work around the issue and get your PC back up and running. The first is the official method from Microsoft, and it is simple. We used this method, and it worked the first time with no issues.
Time needed: 5 minutes.
- Use CTRL-ALT-DEL and choose to open Task Manager.
- Choose “More details” at the bottom of Task Manager to expand Task Manager.
- Go to “File” and choose “Run new task”.
- Type “cmd” in the “Open” field.
- Paste the following (note there is no gaps between the \):
reg delete HKCU \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ IrisService /f && shutdown -r -t 0 - Hit enter, and then your PC should reboot. After rebooting, everything should be back to normal.
If for some reason the above method hasn’t worked for you, Windows Central has produced two other methods that do the trick but aren’t permanent solutions as they block the time and date from synchronising with the servers.
Source: Microsoft
