Start11 menu only displays for a fraction of a second, then disappears

from Stardock Forums

I browsed around the forum a bit, but didn't find evidence that anyone else is having this problem.

Occasionally, when I try to open the Start11 menu (either by clicking the taskbar icon or with the Windows logo key), the menu opens, then immediately closes again.  Not every time, only intermittently (on average, once every 5-10 times I try to open it).

I haven't been able to discern any consistent circumstances that seem to make this happen; it seems somewhat random.  But here are some things I've noticed:

  • It only happens when I have Animate the menu when opening it turned on
  • It never happens twice in a row.  That is, any time I open the menu and it closes again immediately, if I open it again right away, it stays open.  It seems to be necessary to go interact with another window on the desktop, then come back and try to open the Start menu in order to see the misbehavior.
  • I do have the Activate a window by hovering over it with the mouse setting turned on in the Windows Control Panel

My current environment is:

  • OS:  Windows 11, Build 22000.708
  • Start11 version:  1.24
  • Menu Style:  Windows 11 Style

However, I have been a long time user of Start10 prior to this, on a Windows 10 machine with Modern Style set, and I saw the same behavior there as well.  I always thought it was just something flaky about that machine, and I just learned to live with it.  But now I have a new laptop with Win11, and I was hoping this odd behavior would be gone.

Thanks!

/John

 

 

start menu products
3,157 views 6 replies
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top

This will be the problem : 

  • I do have the Activate a window by hovering over it with the mouse setting turned on in the Windows Control Panel

Upon loss of focus the menu will close and that setting is telling Windows to switch to whatever is under the mouse cursor.

Start11 - Customize the Start Menu and Taskbar in Windows 10/11.
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top

I figured that was it.  I did try the Cleanboot Basj suggested, although I thought it was unlikely to help, since I'm working in a new, almost entirely clean Win11 installation.

Indeed it didn't help.  Once I turned on the activate-window-by-hovering setting, the problem reappeared.  (Am I the only person who both uses Start10/11 and turns on this setting?)

I found a comparable alternative Start Menu product that doesn't seem to suffer from this problem.  Not sure how.  It seems to temporarily disable the focus-follows-mouse while the Start Menu is displayed, if that's possible.

Thanks!

/John

Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top

That's an interesting idea to disable that on the fly.

We shall investigate if that's a viable solution.

Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top

Empirically, it seems that is indeed what the other product is doing.  When its Start Menu is displayed, if I mouse over another window, focus doesn't switch.

Probably a matter of twiddling a registry value.  Looks like HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\UserPreferencesMask.  Curiously, if through the Control Panel I change focus-follows-mouse from Off to On, two different bits in the UserPreferencesMask go from 0 to 1 -- bits 1 and 7 (0-based).

/John

Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top

We have addressed this in the 1.25 beta.

As it happens you can cause the same to happen with the OS menu too when your mouse is close to the menu but not over it.