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ZDNET Highlights
- A new Windows 11 bug causes Task Manager to be duplicated.
- Every time you close and reopen the tool, another instance is launched.
- To avoid this, you have to close the Task Manager from the Task Manager itself.
Windows Task Manager shows you all running apps, services and processes so you can see which ones are hogging up memory and close them if necessary. But a new bug affecting Task Manager is actually causing the tool to block more memory than usual.
Released on Tuesday, Microsoft’s October Preview update for Windows 11 improved the Start menu and other key features and fixed several bugs. But it is also responsible for introducing the new task manager glitch. If you installed the update, here’s what might happen.
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Upon launching Task Manager, you can see the names of all currently running apps and background processes, along with how much CPU and memory they are using. After you’re done, you close Task Manager in the normal way by clicking the X to close the window. But the problem lies here.
Task Manager continues to run in memory instead of closing. If you open it again, another instance is launched. Every time you open Task Manager, another instance is launched into memory. Close and then reopen Task Manager enough times throughout the day, and you’ll end up with more and more instances wasting extra memory and system resources.
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I tested it on a Windows 11 laptop on which I installed KB5067036 preview update On Tuesday. Opening, closing, and then reopening Task Manager loaded one instance of the tool after another until I had over 20 instances of it. To see it myself, I scrolled down to the Background Processes section until I found several entries for Task Manager.
What can you do if you are affected?
First, you’ll want to close all instances of Task Manager so that they don’t clog your system. To do this slowly and manually, right-click on each instance and select “End task” from the pop-up menu. To perform the same task more quickly, open a command prompt as administrator (type cmd in the search field and select “Run as administrator” from the results). At the prompt, type taskkill /im taskmgr.exe /fYou should be informed that each instance has been terminated.
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First of all, to avoid the glitch, don’t close Task Manager by clicking the X. Instead, you have to turn it off yourself, as strange as it sounds. Right-click the entry for Task Manager in the Background Processes section and select End Task.
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Most people probably don’t keep opening, closing, and reopening Task Manager all day. However, this kind of bug can affect anyone who is troubleshooting a problem with a specific app or process, or simply measuring system performance or memory usage. Until Microsoft releases a fix for this, you’ll have to make some extra efforts to prevent Task Manager from refilling.
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