Microsoft: ExplorerPatcher, StartAllBack, Start11 break on Windows 11 Moment 2 (KB5022913)

Earlier today, Microsoft announced the February 2023 feature update for Windows 11 22H2 Moment 2. Later on, the company begun rolling out it out to users and as expected from a massive feature update, the changelog is one of the longest you would see.

However, for those using third-party UI customization apps like StartAllBack and ExplorerPatcher, Microsoft has confirmed that new Build 22621.1344 (KB5022913) is causing these apps to not start up and launch properly. For now, Microsoft recommends uninstalling these apps until the tech giant figures out a solution for the issue. On the Windows health dashboard, the company describes the issue, stating:

After installing KB5022913 or later updates, Windows devices with some third-party UI customization apps might not start up. These third-party apps might cause errors with explorer.exe that might repeat multiple times in a loop. The known affected third-party UI customization apps are ExplorerPatcher and StartAllBack. These types of apps often use unsupported methods to achieve their customization and as a result can have unintended results on your Windows device.

Workaround: We recommend uninstalling any third-party UI customization app before installing KB5022913 to prevent this issue. If your Windows device is already experiencing this issue, you might need to contact customer support for the developer of the app you are using. If you are using StartAllBack, you might be able to prevent this issue by updating to the latest version (v3.5.6 or later).

Although not stated by Microsoft, Stardock has confirmed that its Start11 app is also having issues on Moment 2, leading to coloring issues on secondary monitors.

Interestingly, Microsoft still lists the file copy kernel bug in the known issues section even though it should have been fixed with the Moment 2 update. Perhaps, the fix will roll out with the March 2023 Patch Tuesday.