Microsoft releases fix for issue that breaks Taskbar in the latest Windows 11 builds

We recently took a closer look at Windows 11's Taskbar and as well as the new Start menu in Microsoft's next-gen OS that will be available to the general public from October 5. However, the company announced earlier today that the latest insider build versions 22449 for the Dev Channel, and 22000.176 for the Beta Channel, have an issue with the Taskbar whereupon the "Start and Taskbar were unresponsive and Settings and other areas of the OS wouldn’t load."

Here's what it looks like to insiders who were having this problem:

This breaking of the Taskbar makes much of the related GUI pretty much useless.

Later, Microsoft also announced a workaround for this problem after stating it was looking more closely at it. The firm has disabled a server-side deployment of the builds to insiders which was causing the issue.

It has also provided a series of steps for users facing the problem on Builds 22449 and 22000.176 that they can put it in place:

1. Use CTRL-ALT-DEL and choose to open Task Manager.
2. Choose “More details” at the bottom of Task Manager to expand Task Manager.
3. Go to “File” and choose “Run new task”.
4. Type “cmd” in the “Open” field.
5. Paste the following (everything in bold):
   reg delete HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\IrisService /f && shutdown -r -t 0
6. Hit enter, and then your PC should reboot. After rebooting, everything should be back to normal.

Are you an Insider who was encountering this problem with Taskbar? Let us know in the comments below if the workaround fixes it.