If your Windows 11 Start Menu search was acting weird for the past couple of days, Microsoft has finally acknowledged and fixed it via a server-side fix on April 8, 2026 (via Bleeping Computer). Apparently, a faulty Bing update quietly broke the Start Menu search function for a significant portion of Windows 11 23H2 users.
What broke the Start Menu search in the first place?
The culprit, quite ironically, was an update that was meant to make things better. It was a server-side Bing update designed to improve search performance that ended up doing the opposite. This caused the Start Menu search to malfunction.
Affected devices either returned blank search results or failed to load any results, though, in a particularly cruel way, those invisible results were still clickable. The company logged the issue under the tracking ID WI1273488, stating that it was limited in scope.
Though user reports suggest the problem had been coming up quietly for months before the official acknowledgment.
Do you need to do anything to fix the Start Menu issue?
Thankfully, no. Microsoft has opted to roll back the problematic update entirely (instead of issuing a traditional patch). Since the fix has been deployed on the server side, it applies automatically, with no manual intervention required on your end.
You simply need to wait for the rollback to reach your device, which, according to Microsoft, should resolve the disruption progressively across affected systems. It’s a moment of effortless relief for Windows users.
The latest fix comes on the heels of a rough few months for Windows 11. Just last month, the March 2026 security update broke account sign-ins for users across multiple apps, including Teams, OneDrive, and Edge. Microsoft was forced to release another emergency patch within days. Clearly, the company needs to be more cautious with the future updates.
