Start11 vertical taskbar severly inconsistent

from Stardock Forums

I have Start11 V2.6 business edition, running on a laptop with Windows 11 Pro 25H2 (although I had this issue since multiple previous Windows 11 versions ago, since I purchased a Start 11 licence a year ago).

The problem: when a laptop starts, it very often (70-80% of times) starts with vertical desktop being rendered blank:
(I covered the desktop icons with green squares, but see an empty grey vertical taskbar on the right):

To force the taskbar to run properly and render everything, I have mocked up a .bat script to restart it, and I've been using it since the very beginning:

C:\"Program Files (x86)"\Stardock\Start11\Start11.exe UNLOAD
TIMEOUT /T 20
taskkill /F /IM explorer.exe & start explorer
TIMEOUT /T 10
C:\"Program Files (x86)"\Stardock\Start11\Start11.exe

(I am not a software person, Ive put this little script together with AI, it does the trick but I don't know if it is the best it can be...)

After running this little .bat script and forcing Start11 to restart, it usually starts rendering the taskbar fine after 2-3 restarts. Sometimes single restart (I mean executing this bat script once) makes it work, sometimes it takes maximum 4 times, I don't think I had to do more than 4 ever.

The issue only happens upon PC startup. Once Windows is running, the taskbar never goes into this grey mode with nothing visible on a taskbar.

Looks like a software bug. Not the end of the world but using this .bat to make it restart every time the laptop boots is somewhat annonying. Could this be addressed please?

Let me know if I can collect more information about my PC or otherwise help pinning down the problem.

Thank you

start menu products
413 views 7 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top

Hello,
Sorry to hear you are having issues. First, just to make sure everything actually get install properly. Please try this steps: Uninstall Start11, reboot immediately (important), download latest version available in your account product download page: https://store.stardock.com/myaccount/products. Install it, reboot immediately again. Retest it and report back.

Thank you,
Basj,
Stardock Community Assistant.

Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top

Hi Basj

thank you for the reply. I did as you advised:

Uninstalled Start 11 by keeping the settings
Reboot
Installed freshly by using a setup from stardock website (V2.6). Activated the lic
Reboot
Reset Start 11 settings (because I kept them during uninstall)
Set the alignment of taskbar to right hand side (experimental function). No other settings changed. Taskbar moved to the right and rendered fine.
Reboot. Taskbar loaded right-vertical fine.
Reboot. Taskbar loaded on the right-vertical blank grey.
Ran the .bat script from above - restarting the start11 now started rendering the vertical taskbar fine.

In short - reinstall and settings reset didn't help unfortunatelly.

Any other thoughts?

Thank you

The Political Machine 2024
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top

I have disabled all services (except microsoft services), and also disabled all startup apps in "Task Manager" startup selector.

Now out of 5 reboots, the taskbar has loaded fine 4 times, and once it loaded blank grey.

So it seems better, but still not perfect. Is there anything else worth trying?

Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top

Update -

I enabled BitDefender - it now loads grey every second time.

I also have a couple of autohotkey scripts, when enabled it also loads 50%.

Issue being inconsistent makes this challenging ...

Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top

It sounds like a timing issue.

Does this issue also happen if you restart explorer using the button in Start11config?

Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top

Thanks for the hint.

I have modified my bat file to the following:

TIMEOUT /T 15
C:\"Program Files (x86)"\Stardock\Start11\Start11.exe

Then I removed the Start11 service from msconfig services startup selector, and instead I added my bat file (script above) to a startup folder. I also enabled antivirus, gdrive, onedrive sync agents and other regular programs to start with Windows, as before.

I rebooted 5 times and it always booted up fine with taskbar render properly. So thanks - it seems like it was trully a timing issue that Start11 was trying to start before something else which caused an issue, and starting 15 seconds later seems to have solved it. Maybe this delay could be reduced to less than 15 seconds but probably I won't care enough to experiment much. I think I will live with it.

Thanks for the help again