Is Your Windows 11 Start Menu Search Broken? Microsoft Is Rolling Out A Fix

Is Your Windows 11 Start Menu Search Broken? Microsoft Is Rolling Out a Fix

Last updated: 2026/04/08 at 1:16 PM

News Room Published 8 April 2026

Microsoft is rolling out a Windows 11 update to fix a Start Menu glitch that’s been producing blank search results and other issues.

As Bleeping Computer reports, a server-side fix is rolling out now as part of health update WI1273488, so it’ll automatically apply to your device, without you needing to do anything.

Reports suggest the problems began after an April 6 update and appear to affect only devices running Windows 11 23H2.

“An investigation determined that the problem coincided with a server-side Bing update designed to improve search performance,” Microsoft says. “To mitigate the issue, the server-side Bing update was rolled back, and reports of search failures are steadily decreasing.”

Ironically, this comes soon after Windows design director Diego Baca said Microsoft wants to improve both “search performance” and “predictability” of the feature.

Recommended by Our Editors

Earlier this week, another Microsoft representative detailed plans to improve the OS’s responsiveness. In a post on X, Microsoft’s partner director of design, March Rogers, said, “We’ll be releasing performance and reliability improvements incrementally over the next few months to improve Start, Search, and quick settings load times.”

These comments come as part of Microsoft’s latest push to improve Windows 11, which the brand has been detailing since early February. A Microsoft VP also recently teased performance upgrades across Windows 11 and confirmed it would focus less on what it refers to as “unnecessary Copilot entry points.”