I have to laugh. It’s something along Godfather III lines. I’d recently concluded I don’t need Start11 any more because I’m completely at home in the native Start menu. So I’m out. Then, Stardock introduces Start11 v2 — a completely new version for which users must pay to upgrade. Reading about its cool new features, they pull me back in. The lead-in screencap conveys its coolness quite nicely.

Look Top Right: See Start11 v2 Face-Up (Mine!)

Simply put, Start11 v2 lets the built-in Start menu shine through. But it provides all kinds of extras that it can’t do, too. Let’s start with my smiling face up top in the extra right-hand panel. Below, there’s  one-click access the old Library items (Documents, Downloads, etc.). But also my User folder root, Control Panel, Settings, the Run box and This PC in File Explorer (shows as “Computer” at bottom for what I guess are historical reasons).

You can choose from a palette of start menu looks and layouts. Mine is called Windows Pro Style as you can see in the next screencap:

7 start menu styles, many with controls for additional tweaks and twists.

In addition, Start11 v2 provides controls for the Start button itself (I like the Windows 11 logo), the taskbar and taskbar pins (including the ability to pin folders and folder menu pop-ups there), multiple search options and more. Because Start11 v2 accepts a multitude of tweaks, you can also save all that stuff (it’s called “Settings backup”) to a file, then restore and reset settings as you might like. If you have Voidtools Everything installed (part of my basic Windows toolkit), when you search inside the Start11 search facility its results are what come back to you in return. Great stuff!!!

Just When I Thought I Was Out…

Stardock comes along with a truly great uprade to its old stalwart Start menu replacement tool. But I guess we should call it a Start menu enhancement tool these days, eh? Because it was so cheap I sprung for the 5-pack. At under US$13 ($2.60 per instance) it’s too good a deal to pass up — especially against a US$5.99 single copy price.

Historical note: I got into Stardock’s start menu tools with Start8. I cheerfully confess to having been totally befuddled and put off when the “new, redesigned” native Start menu appeared in that OS. I’ve been a pretty loyal user ever since (including Start10). In a “let’s keep a good thing going” kind of way, I’m actually glad to have a reason to WANT to buy into Start11 v2. It had become mostly optional on my 10 or so Windows 11 PCs, tablets and notebooks.

I’ve known this was coming for some time now. Last month, I researched changes to the Windows Troubleshooters to a Get Help facility in Windows 11. Note: “Get Help” works for Windows 10, too. Indeed, it fell under a general heading of “System Components” as explained at MS Support. Thus it came with more of a sense of inevitability, not surprise, when Beta Build 22635.2552 adds System Components to its Settings → System subhead lineup. You can see that pretty clearly in the lead-in graphic, which has Winver superimposed to show Build info.

What Else Appears When Beta Build 22635.2552 Adds System Components?

If you look at the lead-in graphic you’ll notice the following list of elements under the System Components heading (in order of appearance):

• Game Bar: former Xbox Game Bar app, now renamed to drop Xbox.
• Get Help: Built in Windows troubleshooting facilities now runs as an app (and auto-launches when the OS itself spots trouble).
• Microsoft Store: Primary source for Windows apps of all kinds.
• Phone Link: Provides link and synch facilities between smartphones and Windows PCs (iOS and Android devices).
• Tips: Built-in Windows notification, advertisement and “information” items.
• Windows Security: Home to Defender’s AV, account protection, firewall & Internet controls, device security, health and family options.

Essentially this positions these specific apps as Windows built-ins that “come with the OS.” Thus, they can’t be uninstalled: inspection will show their Remove buttons are greyed out in Advanced Options. And although they can be terminated, from a runtime perspective, they’ll “keep coming back from the dead” in Halloween-appropriate fashion.

I find it interesting that MS lumps in Game Bar and Phone Link along with the other built-ins that comprise “system components.” It will also be instructive to watch this category to see when and if it expands, exactly what else appears under this heading. Stay tuned!

After digging further into Reliability Monitor on the P1 Gen6 ThinkPad, I realized things were unacceptably unstable. As an experiment, reset this PC came to the fore. It’s the option available as Settings → System → Recovery from the “Reset PC” button. The resulting window serves as the lead-in graphic for this story (above).

Why Conduct the Experiment: Reset this PC?

Alas, I had four straight days of error behavior like that shown in the next Reliability Monitor screencap. That is, over a dozen serious Critical events, including:

• Windows stopped working (2)
• Windows was not properly shut down (2)
• Hardware error (2)
• Windows shut down unexpectedly (2)
• Various NVIDIA-related “Stopped working” errors (4)

Whoa! That’s a lot of Critical errors for one day…and I had 3 more just like it. [Click image for full-sized view]

In addition, the OS install was showing other odd and unexpected behaviors. For example, I couldn’t get the Edge browser to run. The display was occasionally flashing on and off (probably related to the NVIDIA errors shown). File Explorer was herky-jerkey when traversing the file system. There was probably more, but that was more than enough for me to realize something wicked had already come onto that desktop. Hence, the reset experiment…

Since performing the reset, I’ve experienced exactly one (1) critical error over the past 24 hours. It may still be too early to tell if the reset really fixed things. It might just be having left this PC alone for the last while that’s kept things quiet.

Going through the Reset Process

It seems like Reset is an awful lot like an in-place upgrade repair install, except that it wants the end user to reinstall apps and applications one at a time (each had an “Install” entry in the Start menu/All apps after the first reboot). I’m too lazy to do one-offs like that, so I used the bulk installer built into PatchMyPC Home Updater instead. Works like a peach! Alternatively, I could have done most of those installs using winget instead.

I wasn’t sure if the reset function would take the PC back to its fresh-from-the-factory state. No, it didn’t: it simply reinstalled — via a cloud download — the same version of DevChannel Insider Preview already running on this test PC. Good to know!

Stay tuned: I’ll report back if the earlier instability persists. I had attributed it to an Intel firmware update. I’ll end up poking it one way or another over the next days and see if it blows up again.