Desktop Icons Left Side only do not work at startup

kirbster 1 120 Reputation points
2025-12-05T13:50:00.7433333+00:00

Windows 11 25H2 26200.7309 (KB5070311)

Has anyone else experienced desktop icons not responding at startup with a mouseover? I have had this happen every morning since installing the above KB#.

I am old school and shutdown my system every night. The next morning after powering on my system if I move my mouse to the left side of my desktop and hover over an icon, I am unable to select it. If I move my mouse to a right side icon upon hovering with my mouse that icon will highlight then if I move back to the left side icon it will work at that time.

I have "hibernation" disabled, turn on fast startup (recommended) turned off and this has only happened after installing that KB.desktop

Windows Insider program | Windows Insider preview | Desktop environment and Start menu
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  1. Thomas4-N 21,530 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator
    2025-12-06T09:47:15.59+00:00

    Hello kirbster 1, welcome to Microsoft Q&A forum. Thank you for sharing the details.

    Please understand that Insider Preview builds are experimental and sometimes include incomplete features or temporary regression. If stability is important for your work, you might want to consider sticking to the Release Preview channel.

    To make the desktop fully responsive after startup, you can try one of these workarounds:

    • Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc to open Task Manager, which forces the shell to finish initializing immediately.
    • Alternatively, press Win + R, type explorer.exe, and press Enter to restart only the desktop portion without rebooting the entire system.

    If the behavior feels too disruptive, you can consider removing the latest preview cumulative update (KB5070311). This can be done through Settings, WinRE, or Command Prompt. Let me know if you would like detailed steps for any of these methods.

    If the answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and kindly upvote it. If you have extra questions about this answer, please click "Comment".  

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