Windows 11’s October Preview Update Has Task Manager Duplication Issue

The optional October preview update for Windows 11 versions 25H2 and 24H2 that Microsoft released on Tuesday comes with an unexpected Task Manager duplication bug that may slow down PCs. Microsoft has yet to acknowledge the issue on the update’s release notes, but you may want to be careful if you use Task Manager a lot throughout the day.

As first reported by Windows Latest, it appears that Task Manager may fail to close properly when clicking the X button to shut it down. The app may keep running in the background, and relaunching it will open another instance of the app, using unnecessary resources.

While this Task Manager duplication bug doesn’t affect all devices where the October preview update is installed, there’s a workaround: To properly close Task Manager, users affected by the issue will need to right-click the entry for Task Manager in the Background Process section of the app and select “End Task.” If multiple instances of the app are already running, users will need to do this on each instance.

Because this is an optional Windows 11 update, the number of users affected by the bug should not be that significant. Users would also need to close and re-open Task Manager multiple times throughout the day to probably notice that multiple instances of the app are clogging their memory.

Anyway, let’s hope Microsoft fixes this bug before the release of next month’s Patch Tuesday Update. The optional KB5067036 update is actually packed with new features, including a redesigned Start Menu, new colored battery icons on the taskbar and lock screen, Click to Do improvements on Copilot+ PCs, and more.