On May 26, Microsoft released KB5003214, a patch that targets Windows 10 versions 2004, 20H2, and 21H1. It comes with a lengthy list of fixes and improvements. Among them, there are a couple of improvements made to the News and Interest pane. The latter has become available to all users of the OS, and now reportedly is a cause of tasbkar crashes.
According to affected users, the patch causes a lot of issues with taskbar. The taskbar does't display app icons properly, instead having blank images, and the system tray looks broken as well.
After installing quality cumulative preview update KB5003214, I’ve got some issues with the taskbar, mainly right side icons will move randomly, disappear (hide) or will be scrambled.
Says one of the Feedback Hub reports.
Other reports point that after installing KB5003214 users run into issues with Actions Center and the Network flyout.
As a workaround, you can disable the News and Interest feature.
Disable News and Interests in the taskbar
- Right-click the empty space on the taskbar.
- Select News and interests > Hidden from the context menu.
- The feature is now removed from the taskbar.
Obviously, uninstalling the update also fixes the above mentioned issues.
It is worth mentioning that Microsoft has released the KB5003214 patch as an optional "C" preview update. The update raises the OS version to Builds 19041.1023 for Windows 10 2004, build 19042.1023 for Windows 10 20H2, and 19043.1023 for Windows 10 21H1. That's the good thing about this release is that these newly discovered will be fixed before they hit the production branch of the OS.
Thanks to our reader Myron for the tip.
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uninstalled but news and interests do not appear