Windows 11 File Explorer address and menu bars invisible

Anonymous
2024-01-26T20:39:51+00:00

Suddenly on one of my Windows 11 Pro systems at home the address bar and menu bar became invisible. They were there and responded to mouse clicks and I could type in the address bar. But they are invisible. The problem existed whether signed in to the console session or an RDP session.

Also, in File Explorer and on the desktop when I right clicked, the menu window appeared but was blank. I could move the cursor through it and see a change and get submenus to open but of course they too were blank. I clicked on these menus and they responded with the appropriate response depending on where the cursor was when clicked.

I tried playing with themes, display properties, I've run SFC /scannow and DISM (with the restorehealth option). The first SFC found corruption and said it fixed it. Subsequent runs have found no problems. The last thing I did was do a Reset (keeping files). Nothing I've done has made any difference.

My account has admin rights on the system. I tried signing in with another account which also has admin rights and for this account the bars weren't invisible but simply not there. I then signed out of the other account and signed back in as myself. Much to my surprise the bars are now gone for me as well! This had not happened despite multiple reboots and all else that I had done. Only after signing in with the other account and then back in as myself. I rebooted but no change.

Any ideas how to fix this one system?

Jonathan

Windows for home | Windows 11 | Performance and system failures

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  1. Anonymous
    2024-02-10T17:57:27+00:00

    I too was beginning to think that I was the only one experiencing this problem, until I found your writeup here.

    I noticed that if I hold down the Shift key and right click on the desktop, "Show more options" 'page' of the context menu is visible. So added "Restart Windows Explorer" in my context menu. Slightly less inconvenient than restarting it from task manager?

    Stevie Rhys

    Not a bad idea but restarting Explorer doesn't do anything in my case. No matter what I've tried, and I've tried everything listed her plus a couple other things, nothing has worked to fix the problem. There's just something about Windows 11 and this particular PC.

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  2. Anonymous
    2024-02-13T07:44:13+00:00

    So restarting Explorer does nothing for you. That is horrible. Let's hope someone will chime with a solution.

    Stevie Rhys

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  3. Anonymous
    2024-02-13T18:31:31+00:00

    So restarting Explorer does nothing for you. That is horrible. Let's hope someone will chime with a solution.

    Stevie Rhys

    I don't think there's anything left to try since the last thing I tried was the "nuke and pave" approach. I even deleted and recreated the partitions as part of that. Just nothing has helped. It's just odd because one day things were fine and the next they weren't. I have other Win11 systems at the same update level but they're working just fine.

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  4. Anonymous
    2024-04-26T07:36:52+00:00

    i lost address bar/search bar/back forth arrow after window updated. it happened april 24, 2024. crazily searching on net for solution but i can't find it.

    please help.

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  5. Anonymous
    2024-04-27T01:21:53+00:00

    I lost address bar/search bar/back forth arrow also with last windows 11 update

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