Microsoft admits major Windows 11 25H2 UI features broken too alongside 24H2 on some PCs

Last month in the second half on November, Neowin noticed that Microsoft had put up a support article describing the broken nature of some of Windows' most important UI and UX components. If you missed the news, the tech giant admitted that Windows 11's Shell elements which include the Explorer, the Start Menu, Taskbar, among others, were bugging out on certain enterprise and office systems.

The support article was published as guidance for IT admins and system admins to deal with such issues. The main problem was related to XAML, and earlier today, Microsoft added more details about the problems.

As a refresher, the company acknowledged that since the July 2025 Patch Tuesday update (KB5062553), the problems were occurring on provisioned Windows 11 24H2 PCs.

In our original article, we speculated that alongside Windows 11 24H2, version 25H2 is likely affected too, considering the two versions share the same codebase and the servicing branch. Today, Neowin noticed Microsoft has confirmed that it is indeed the case as the company added that the October 2025 Patch Tuesday for Windows 11 25H2 (KB5066835) had these problems too; they started with the September 2025 preview update (KB5065789). In effect this means the latest Windows 11 update KB5070311 is affected too.

Alongside that Microsoft has also clarified that these bugs are very unlikely to rear their heads on personal home PCs. The tech giant writes: "After provisioning a PC with a Windows 11, version 24H2 or a Windows 11, version 25H2 monthly cumulative update released on or after July 2025 (such as KB5062553 or KB5065789), XAML-dependent modern apps such as Explorer, the Start menu, SystemSettings, Taskbar and Windows Search might experience difficulties. This issue primarily affects a limited number of enterprise or managed environments and is very unlikely to occur on personal devices used by individuals."

Microsoft has also shared a table with all the detailed bugs and the symptoms which is now much easier to grasp than the company's last write-up:

The workaround for these issues remains the same. Microsoft says that restarting the Shell Infrastructure host (SIHost.exe) service will help restore the missing Immersive Shell packages. This can be done with the following commands:

Add-AppxPackage -Register -Path 'C:\Windows\SystemApps\MicrosoftWindows.Client.CBS_cw5n1h2txyewy\appxmanifest.xml' -DisableDevelopmentMode

 

Add-AppxPackage -Register -Path 'C:\Windows\SystemApps\Microsoft.UI.Xaml.CBS_8wekyb3d8bbwe\appxmanifest.xml' -DisableDevelopmentMode

 

Add-AppxPackage -Register -Path 'C:\Windows\SystemApps\MicrosoftWindows.Client.Core_cw5n1h2txyewy\appxmanifest.xml' -DisableDevelopmentMode

Second, a PowerShell logon script has been shared that essentially blocks Explorer from launching prematurely until the required packages are fully provisioned. The batch script for that is given below:

@echo off
REM Register MicrosoftWindows.Client.CBS

 

powershell.exe -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command "Add-AppxPackage -Register -Path 'C:\Windows\SystemApps\MicrosoftWindows.Client.CBS_cw5n1h2txyewy\appxmanifest.xml' -DisableDevelopmentMode"

 

REM Register Microsoft.UI.Xaml.CBS

 

powershell.exe -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command "Add-AppxPackage -Register -Path 'C:\Windows\SystemApps\Microsoft.UI.Xaml.CBS_8wekyb3d8bbwe\appxmanifest.xml' -DisableDevelopmentMode"

 

REM Register MicrosoftWindows.Client.Core

 

powershell.exe -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command "Add-AppxPackage -Register -Path 'C:\Windows\SystemApps\MicrosoftWindows.Client.Core_cw5n1h2txyewy\appxmanifest.xml' -DisableDevelopmentMode"

The support article is available here under KB5072911 on Microsoft's official website.

Source

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Posted Thursday 4 December 2025 at 5:01 am AEST (my time).

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