Microsoft Task Manager now tasking PCs with running multiple copies of itself

Microsoft's ability to add bugs in the most unexpected of places has continued into its latest update to Windows 11, which spawns multiple copies of Task Manager, sucking down resources you'd normally use Task Manager to kill. The issue, which turned up in the non-security preview update for Windows 11 (KB5067036), manifests …

[Blackjack]

Honesty is like Microsoft actually wants people to stop using Windows at this point.

[Omnipresent]

They're betting you won't.

They know they can, and do, whatever manner of evil and criminal mischief their wretched little black hearts can come up with.

You can do nothing but sit and anguish at a more perfect world that has been disappeared by the masked gestapo.

You are not your master. You are a slave of the machine. You belong to microsoft, and big tech is owned by some of the world's most evil people, doing the devils work.

[Boris the Cockroach]

Sounds like

the last of the kwalitea kntroll dep has ben rolled up into AI (with the expected results)

Beer... because its 5 mins to beer o'clock here...... and time to blot out the week's events

[vtcodger]

Shades of Wallace Simpson

You can never be too rich or too thin or have too many task managers running.

[AlanSh]

Not here

My laptop has Window 11 25H2 and I can't reproduce that behaviour.

[captain veg]

Re: Not here

From TFA: "The issue, which turned up in the non-security preview update for Windows 11 (KB5067036)"

Your system probably doesn't automatically apply preview updates.

-A.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is anyone surprised? It's from Microsoft.

[blu3b3rry]

The only Windows PC I have to deal with is at work

and thank goodness it dates from 2014 and is "too old" to run Windows 11. Windows 10 is bad enough without having to put up with the utter dogshit that counts for QC at Microsoft.

[Aleph0]

Can still be terminated by command line

Windows + R to bring up the Run Program dialog, then:

cmd /c taskkill /f /im taskmgr.exe

Since it terminates all the named processes at once, it also comes handy to get rid of those pesky programs that execute two instances of themselves, each one acting as a watchdog and relaunching the other if it crashes or is terminated by the user.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: Can still be terminated by command line

Save the cmd /d here, that is not needed.

[m4r35n357]

Re: Can still be terminated by command line

/inspired /use /of /the/ forward /slash /M$

[captain veg]

Re: /forward /slash

Actually that was inherited from CP/M. So thank Digital Research.

-A.

[Nugry Horace]

Re: /forward /slash

CP/M utilities didn't use the slash -- STAT used $, PIP used [ . More likely to be inspired by TOPS-10.

[FirstTangoInParis]

Re: Can still be terminated by command line

If it was Debian based the command would be

killall taskmgr

Perhaps in WSL the most appropriate command would be

killall microsoft

[LVPC]

Job security

>> But then again, this is Microsoft, and the company has a particular reputation when it comes to quality control, as many an administrator looking glumly at their Azure management portal this week will confirm.

On the bright side, it's good job security to have. a job fixing those bugs, what with all the layoffs to help fund not-really-AI

[Piro]

Taskmgr -d

Launches the previous task manager.

Windows 11 is really, really bad. I have found nothing at all to like.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

No surprise here...

Ever since the release of Windows 11 the task manager showed on way too many occasions the wrong icons. The WinTV icon for the explorer, for example, and a lot of other misplaced icons. No surprise other weird things pop up.

Download Server 2003 r2 x64 service pack 2, unpack it, take THAT taskmgr.exe, still works. In details some numbers are not correct, but they are not too far off reality. Why THAT version? I can tell the difference between x64 and x86 tasks, the little asterix...

Edit: And it shows my 32 SMT CPUs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry Homer, there might be something donuts cannot do ...

but there is absolutely nothing Microsoft cannot definitively break.

Curious whether the old Winternals (sysinternals) tools still work ? Pre MS acquisition (~2006) there was some source code too.

[m4r35n357]

Re: Sorry Homer, there might be something donuts cannot do ...

How about Back Orifice? ;)

[DaveMcM]

Re: Sorry Homer, there might be something donuts cannot do ...

All available to download here - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/

I still use Process Explorer and TCPView on a fairly regular basis.

[W.S.Gosset]

Code clue from Plummer

Dave Plummer said this behaviour could be replicated in his design/code if there's a bug in the code for the tray icon (now renamed taskbar or whatever) that's "wrapping"/providing the user's non-TaskMgr window visibility&access. His DestroySelf code would have timed-out on checking for that tray process then shooting it, so either it's something else or subsequent coders on TaskMgr have cocked up the basics/deleted his timeout.

[Richard 12]

Explorer is cocked up too

The "new" Windows 11 file explorer keeps getting into a state where it's impossible to select any files.

Once in that state, the ribbon is the only thing still working. I assume because that common control was written pre-Copilot.

It's amazing. A file manager that cannot select files.

[ITMA]

Re: Explorer is cocked up too

Perhaps that's because, in Microsoft's view, you are supposed to be using CoPilot to select the files for you....

What's next Microsoft, free lobotomys because you don't think users (aka CUSTOMERS) should be thinking for themselves and so don't need a brain?

[Dwarf]

Vibe coding ?

Is this just vibe coding in action. Perhaps the AI is looking for alternaitve ways to survive being terminated.

Either way, a really small amount of testing should have shown this sort of error. Resource leaks are hardly a new concept after all.

[Michael Strorm]

We need a Task Manager Task Manager

Yo dawg, etc.

[mw_foot]

You were supposed to destroy the processes not join them!

Another reason to fallback to Get-Process and Stop-Process in powershell.

The gui has got really laggy in Win 11 24H2. Maybe we need to treat it more like linux and default to CLI.

[Roland6]

Re: You were supposed to destroy the processes not join them!

It would seem that perhaps MS have decided the GUI is not the future, instead it’s the command line, and this is another nudge in that direction.

[JimmyPage]

The more I hear about windows

The happier I am that I stuck with the command line.

[BPontius]

Batting 1000

Microsoft also botched hot patching for some Windows Server 2025 devices with KB5070881 out of band update. Quality is not a priority at Microsoft!

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: Batting 1000

Yeah, but... Do you know anyone, ANYONE insane enough to trust hotpatching? From THAT company? I bet only ten installations, possibly two of them at customers and the rest MS-internal, were affected.

[mark jacobs]

Another Windows 11 horror - good old NotePad. Now it is multi-tabbed and remembers all the files you've had open. If you don't close the tab, it'll be there next time you open NotePad. Seems like a good idea, until you realise that Windows holds each of those files in the tabs open in read-deny-write mode, so that you can't overwrite any of those files while NotePad is open! Text editors are supposed to open and read the file and then close it. Good ones monitor the file for changes while it is opened in the editor, and warns you if something else has changed it. Bad ones hold the file open so it can't be writtent to until you close the tab or the editor.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Server 2025 still has classical notepad. Classical calculator. Classical non-AI paint with zoom-steps which make sense. SWITCH BEFORE 25H2 GETS RELEASED... Keys are available quite cheap. You get deduplication on top, a possibility to uninstall defender without weird hacks, just a few GUI clicks etc... I switched about two month ago to the "actual Windows Pro" version.