Windows 11 - Clicking on user within start menu does nothing

Posted by TheBigBlack@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 12 comments

Recently we have had an issue with the Windows 11 start menu. Nothing happens when users click their profile within the start menu to access their sign out options. A loading wheel appears for a brief moment, then nothing. This randomly sprung up across our domain a few weeks back and nothing I've tried has fixed it. Has anyone else experienced this? I'm hoping we aren't experiencing some sort of OS corruption. Thanks in advance!

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12 Comments

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malcyjnz@reddit

Has anyone fixed this? I thought I had the other day as an affected device actually showed the menu. BUT it was only after a minute! I'd just left the screen working while I did something else. Sigh. Such a dumb thing

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pesos711@reddit

we are getting ready to move to new machines with 24h2 and I had one user mention this issue - I could not repro it on our test VMs (hyper-v machines) but they said they were able to repro it on two different laptops with different users (all in the same Intune). I just connected to one of the laptops (Surface Laptop 5) and was able to repro it - I still cannot get it to happen on a VM. The other machine he can do it on is a Surface Laptop Studio. Is there potentially some Surface related driver or something that might be interacting weirdly with photon or some other aspect of the start menu?

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herku44@reddit

Same here, haven' found a fix yet.

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Nervous_Chip5174@reddit

having the same issue: same devices, same config, some are displying this issue, some not. I do not get a spinning wheel but the Start Menu just closes when a user profile icon is clicked. No solution was found for the moment: I do not even know what is the problem.

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Nervous_Chip5174@reddit

Just spent a few hours debugging this on my side and found the solution: The new version of Windows 24h2 requires Microsoft.Client.Photon appx (part of the Experience pack) in order to show the menu with user details. I have found that this thing is specific to 24H2 and required since the latest march update. In my case, Applocker was blocking the install of unknown apps. Once I updated policies on my side and allowed installation, the APPX was installed on the fisrt click in the start menu(it just closed without overlay shown) and worked from the second one flawlessly.

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TheBigBlack@reddit (OP)

Yup what you described is 100% the same issue

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dracotrapnet@reddit

I'd say start diving into event viewer. No issue on this laptop win 11 24h2 but it is on a 14 day lag for updates and only installs Thursday and Saturday at lunch time so I don't have March updates yet. User account is a on prem domain user with M365. I just booted my personal off-domain laptop win 11 24h2. No issue there either and it has the March updates already. User is not on domain and signed into a hotmail account. I added a local admin account, signed in, no issue. Added a local non-admin account, signed in, no issue.

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_asterisk@reddit

I have the same issue on my workstation. Windows Error Reporting is also logging an event for it for me: Fault bucket , type 0 Event Name: StoreAgentSearchUpdatePackagesFailure1 Response: Not available Cab Id: 0 Problem signature: P1: Acquisition; P5: Windows.Desktop Something to do with the Windows Store apparently.

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jmbpiano@reddit

Does this happen when using a local, offline account? That panel normally displays information about the user's Microsoft account status, so I'm wondering if something's going wrong when it tries to load the relevant information on the backend. (A purely local account wouldn't be affected the same way.)

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TheBigBlack@reddit (OP)

Well I just tried it with a local account, and it did the same thing. Most of our users are on AD domain accounts.

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jmbpiano@reddit

This is going to sound weird, but... can you test and see if switching the OS between light and dark mode makes a difference? I'm grasping at straws here, but I remember it [coming up](https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1j8i92g/patch_tuesday_megathread_20250311/mh98vb0/) in the last patch Tuesday megathread that the latest update was patching that particular "flyout menu" to fix a bug related to the dark/light mode color scheme. It's *possible* they broke something else in the process. Best of luck to you, sincerely. Other than running a DISM+sfc combo to check/correct corruption, I'm afraid I've got nothing else to offer.

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TheBigBlack@reddit (OP)

I appreciate your help! I just tried that and no dice. I went ahead and started a thread on Msoft Q&A with some error / event logs that correspond to this issue hopefully they'll be able to help me make sense of the logs.