Win 8.1 Start button and Charms randomly stops working BUG (workaround)

To anyone experiencing this, it is a bug in Win 8.1 which I can replicate at will.

Reinstalling your system as suggested by MS engineers will not fix this.

To force the bug to appear:

1. Grab a desktop Icon (recycle bin, any shortcut) and move this up to the top left hand corner without letting go of the mouse button. Drop shortcut anywhere on desktop. Without an Icon the mouse pointer would initiate the recent apps.

2. To check that the first step has worked, try and invoke charms by moving mouse to top right hand corner.  If Charms do not appear then the bug has been triggered.

3. Now move mouse over start button (no click), move away then back again. Now the start button is locked.  If you unlock the taskbar you can move it to any other position (top, left or right) and the start button works.  Move taskbar back to the bottom and the start button still does not work.  Only way to get it working again is to restart window explorer in task manager.

To avoid this happening all you need to do is disable recent apps corner.

1. Right click desktop.

2. Click Taskbar and Navigation

3. Click Navigation tab in the properties window

4. Uncheck "When I click the upper-left corner, switch between my recent tabs."

Now the bug cannot be triggered as above to make the start button stop working. You have to remove this feature which is pretty hopeless on a desktop anyway.  Its better than restarting Window explorer every time.

I can replicate this on any desktop or laptop, fresh install or old. Not sure about any touch screen machines. I can also trigger this in VMPlayer\Virtual Box and the Modern IE VM images that MS provide.

Now the MS engineers can replicate this on their machines, and maybe if we are lucky they will FIX it!!!!

MS please acknowledge that this is a bug.

Maybe the issue is due to the windows button not being redrawn on the screen once triggered as it still works when taskbar is moved (graphic card drivers). Could not find anything use full in the system logs.

Just noticed also that the charms also breaks if you drag an Icon up to the right hand corner. Once triggered Charms stops working, start button is not affected with the above work around configured.

MS please read this and reply.

  • Changed type Cussco Monday, October 27, 2014 5:57 PM
  • Changed type Cussco Monday, October 27, 2014 10:44 PM
October 27th, 2014 5:57pm

Cussci

Tried this on a win 8.1 VM and win 10 (9860) and it does not work as you suggest.  I suspect it is local to your environment.

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October 27th, 2014 11:37pm

I do not think so as I have tested this on 17 PCs I have installed fresh copies of 8.1, i have tested this on various pre-installed laptops and other PC's. I have also tested this in VM and Virtual box using VM's from microsoft on my own Win7 laptop. 

To get the bug to trigger it can be quite fiddly (top left hand corner), but you can tell you have triggered this as Charms will stop working from the desktop. Then hover over the start button twice to make this stop responding. As you can see the environments are all different.

Maybe there is something different between our environments but looking at the amount of users that are experiencing this issue it does not make sense.  Even users of RT have reported this issue.

I am open to suggestions.

I will try Win 10 also.

Cheers

October 28th, 2014 2:48pm

suspect it is local to your environment.

Others seeing the same symptom.  Note that originally I was not using the Top left hover for thumbnail  feature and then also claimed not to see it.

Oh.  And here is another factor that someone else is using as a workaround.  A link to the first thread I was thinking of can be found in this one

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/ie/en-US/d4526a1c-f811-4b67-9e4f-8a2e8f301917/charms-bar-and-start-button-freezes?forum=w8itprogeneral#2a21ea9a-4924-4808-9c2f-c4a7c0de8223

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October 28th, 2014 4:58pm

Dude you rock.  I can't believe you figured out what was causing this.  I was able to duplicate the bug on my Lenovo G780 running windows 8.1.  

Not sure why I kept accidentally dragging icons up to the left corner but clearly disabling that corner (which I never use anyway) has fixed the problem.

 It has been vexing me for the last two months.  No one else had any clue what I was talking about.

Thanks again.


March 20th, 2015 5:07pm

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