The February 2022 optional update, KB5010414, is causing pain for some Windows 11 users. According to the complaints on the Feedback Hub, many people complained that their Start menu behaved strangely after installing the update. Specifically, the Start menu turned out to be automatically hidden when hovering over an icon pinned to the taskbar.
However, according to Microsoft, this is not actually a bug, but a feature. Because starting with KB5010414, the Windows 11 widget board has been pinned to the left side of the taskbar.
As originally envisioned, when you hover over the icon, you can activate it. Sadly, for some reason, this seems to cause the Start menu to encounter conflicts that are opened and then closed immediately.
Moving the cursor near the left side of the taskbar causes the Start menu to be significantly dismissed, even if the user is not attempting to interact with the widget pad.
This has been verified by comments from netizens on the Feedback Hub and social media – “the problem is that the system thinks you want to open the widget menu”.
Originally it was supposed to close the Start menu only when the widgets menu was clicked on.
For this bug, Microsoft responded below the feedback post:
We’re working on a fix for this bug, and believe that the user moving the mouse over the widget icon may also be a cause of this. Until an official fix is rolled out, we recommend that you try to avoid going over the widget icon when moving your mouse over the ‘Start’ menu.
In addition, in another article, Microsoft confirmed that it has introduced a fix in the preview version to solve the problem of the Start menu being opened and closed when the pointer cursor is moved.
To make matters worse, the KB5010414 February cumulative update not only cluttered up the Start menu, it also caused some users to experience issues with the taskbar — either not loading smoothly, or showing up blankly.
One user wrote on the forum – after installing the update, some apps (Chrome, Teams, Edge) would cover the taskbar when maximized. Even though MS Office applications are not in front of the taskbar, their maximized windows still appear behind the taskbar.
After analyzing the details received from users, Windows Latest believes that the taskbar improvements introduced in KB5010415 may be the culprit for these problems.