Restarting Explorer causing issues

[danialasghar]

Windows 11, version 23H2
Latest Windhawk, latest start menu styler.

This is gonna be a convoluted bug, I have a laptop and windows 11 has the issue where waking up from sleep sometimes the taskbar icons disappear. The only quick fix being either restart all the apps or restart explorer.exe.

The way I am doing a restart explorer is the following command:
C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c taskkill /im explorer.exe /f & start explorer.exe & exit

The problem is with this mod, upon restarting explorer, the mod doesnt load correctly. The start menu is half broken until I restart my computer.

[m417z]

Which theme/styles are you using? Does it happen if the mod is loaded but no styles are used?

[danialasghar]

This issue for me is occuring in sidebyside2. The screenshot shows the error... the all apps scrollable screen doesn't load the apps properly after restarting explorer.

I confirmed its also occuring in SidebySide, SidebySideMinimal.

It does not occur when no style is applied

[m417z]

@bbmaster123 did you encounter this problem?

BTW as a workaround, have you tried terminating StartMenuExperienceHost.exe? It should relaunch automatically.

[bbmaster123]

@m417z Yea I occasionally get that bug, I have no idea what causes it. It seems to typically happen after logon, and is fixed by restarting explorer or startmenuexperiencehost.exe. If I had to guess, this is probably only an issue for themes that have the appslist visible by default. Themes like TranslucentStartMenu should in theory be unaffected.

Next time I encounter the bug I'll grab a log

[danialasghar]

I can grab some logs for you guys, is there any documentation on how to get em

[bbmaster123]

@danialasghar
in the mod, go to the advanced tab at the top. In the dropdown change it to mod logs, and click show output. If the log looks clean we can try debug logs, shouldn't need windhawk logs probably just mod logs

[danialasghar]

Attached is the log
log.txt

I did notice one thing during capturing the log, the all apps entrys are empty (log was saying populating grid or something) but I clicked the arrow icon here, then when I chose an alphabet and started scrolling again, it fixed it

[bbmaster123]

hmm
looking at your log, these stand out to me:

07:24:11.606 16252 StartMenuExperienceHost.exe  [WH] [windows-11-start-menu-styler] [1094:OnVisualTreeChange]: Mutation type: Add
07:24:11.606 16252 StartMenuExperienceHost.exe  [WH] [windows-11-start-menu-styler] [1106:OnVisualTreeChange]: Element type: Windows.UI.Xaml.Controls.ListViewItem
07:24:11.606 16252 StartMenuExperienceHost.exe  [WH] [windows-11-start-menu-styler] [1121:OnVisualTreeChange]: FrameworkElement name: 
07:24:11.606 16252 StartMenuExperienceHost.exe  [WH] [windows-11-start-menu-styler] [1754:TestElementMatcher]: Different property class:  vs. Windows.Foundation.IReference`1<Double>

07:24:18.073 16028 StartMenuExperienceHost.exe  [WH] [windows-11-start-menu-styler] [1477:SetOrClearValue]: Error 80004005: Unspecified error

07:24:19.360 16028 StartMenuExperienceHost.exe  [WH] [windows-11-start-menu-styler] [1106:OnVisualTreeChange]: Element type: Windows.UI.Xaml.Controls.TextBlock
07:24:19.361 16028 StartMenuExperienceHost.exe  [WH] [windows-11-start-menu-styler] [1121:OnVisualTreeChange]: FrameworkElement name: 
07:24:19.361 16028 StartMenuExperienceHost.exe  [WH] [windows-11-start-menu-styler] [2045:ApplyCustomizations]: Applying styles
07:24:19.361 16028 StartMenuExperienceHost.exe  [WH] [windows-11-start-menu-styler] [1477:SetOrClearValue]: Error 80004005: Unspecified error
07:24:19.361 16028 StartMenuExperienceHost.exe  [WH] [windows-11-start-menu-styler] [1089:OnVisualTreeChange]: 

have you added custom styles for the searchbox or textblocks? If so, could you send your full style code? If not, we might need the detailed debug logs or the windhawk logs. Best guess is something could be interfering with the mod

maybe you can also try adding an exclusion for windhawk in Bitwarden if you haven't already tried that?

[danialasghar]

Custom styles? no the only mods I am using are the start menu styler, taskbar height, and modernize dialog picker.

For file explorer I have disabled the modern command bar to use ribbon ui and use qttabbar.

I didnt understand the bitwarden part? I use the browser extension primarily and I didnt see an exclusion list anywhere in the settings.

I will send some debug logs later

[danialasghar]

debug logs:

I have done the steps for enabling sidebyside2, then scrolling start menu, then restarting explorer, scrolling and facing the bug, then using the alphabet picker to fix the prob

log.txt

[bbmaster123]

thanks!

ok cool no custom styles, just had to be sure.
Those other mods/customizations you've mentioned shouldn't be affecingt the start menu...
Nevermind regarding bitwarden, I mistakenly thought it was antivirus, my bad!

the 3 main errors I see in the debug log seem to relate to:

• StartDocked.SearchBoxToggleButton (search pill at the top)
• Windows.UI.Xaml.Controls.ListViewItem (apps list)
• Windows.UI.Xaml.Controls.TextBlock (pinned text, more suggestions text)

in the sidebyside2 theme, all of these targets are customized, whereas in sidebyside, only the header texts are customized, and sbs minimal only the search pill is customized.

This leads me to believe we can eliminate the styles as the root of the issue. Also I personally use my own windows 10 theme (ofc) and while this does happen to me every few months randomly, an explorer restart clears it for me every time (or using the jump to letter thing like you did).

next up to try:

1. manually run windhawk as admin
2. scan windows for errors (the 3 dism commands, reboot, sfc / scannow, reboot)
3. reinstall windhawk
4. grab windhawk logs (instructions below)
5. get Michael to look into this more in depth

to grab windhawk logs:

1. to to settings at the top right
2. expand advanced settings, click more advanced settings
3. change both dropdowns to error, save and restart windhawk
4. trigger the apps list issue, capture log. Log can be viewed with DebugView

let me know how it goes, and if windows finds any errors during dism/sfc