[Bug] Scrollbar in Context Menu Crashes Windows 11 Explorer
Today I’m going to talk about a funny as well as a very annoying bug present in Windows 11 operating system. I encountered this bug yesterday while customizing Windows 11 in one of computer systems.
This bug is related to context menu or right-click menu. In Windows 11, when you right-click on Desktop or inside Explorer (This PC) or anywhere else, you get a menu similar to following image:
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Windows 11 comes with a redesigned context menu which has been developed using new acrylic material (part of fluent design UI). It now features translucent blur and glass transparency effects. The new context menu is a little bit larger than the classic context menu present in previous Windows versions such as Windows 10. You can still access the old type context menu by selecting “Show more options” link present at the bottom of the context menu or by pressing Shift+F10 keys together.
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The bug appears when we set a custom scaling for the display in Windows 11. I set the DPI scaling to 125% to make the things larger and easy to read on screen.
When I switched to 125% scaling in Windows 11, the operating system immediately started showing a weird scrollbar in all context menus and direct menus.
Here are some screenshots for your viewing pleasure:
Following screenshot shows the scrollbar appearing on Desktop context menu:
Following screenshot shows the scrollbar appearing in Explorer context menu:
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The scrollbar also appears in Ribbon menu as shown in following screenshot:
When I clicked on the scrollbar down button to scroll down, it crashed the Explorer or shell and Windows 11 restarted the Explorer. Sometimes clicking on the scrollbar in context menu made it stuck or not responding.
Steps to Reproduce Scrollbar Bug in Windows 11:
You can also reproduce the bug by changing the scaling to 125% in your Windows 11 device.
Following steps will help you in modifying scaling in Windows 11:
1. Open Settings app from Start Menu. Alternatively, you can press WIN+I keys together to open Settings directly.
2. Now click on “Display” option present under “System” tab.
3. On the next page, under “Scale & Layout” section, you’ll see “Scale (Change the size of text, apps, and other items)” option.
It’s set to 100% (Recommended) by default.
Select 125% from the drop-down box and it’ll immediately change the display scaling in your Windows 11 device.
Now right-click on Desktop, Explorer and other icons and you should see the scrollbar bug in context menus.
In my opinion, the bug appears because Windows 11 fails to calculate the correct dimensions to display the context menu and some options are not shown in the context menu. As a result, Windows 11 starts showing scrollbar inside the context menu which should not happen and when the user clicks on the scrollbar, Windows 11 Explorer crashes.
After some troubleshooting, I was able to fix this bug and the annoying scrollbar disappeared from the context menus. Using a workaround given in below steps, I was able to remove the scrollbars from context menus when I was using 125% custom scaling as shown in following screenshot:
If you also use custom scaling such as 125% or other in Windows 11 and want to get rid of this scrollbar bug, following steps will help you:
1. Open Settings app from Start Menu or by pressing WIN+I keys together.
2. Now click on “Accessibility” option present in left-sidebar.
3. In right-side pane, click on “Text Size” option.
Now increase the text size using the given slider. You’ll need to try and test different text sizes to fix the scrollbar issue.
In my Windows 11 device, when I changed the text size to 109 with 125% scaling, it fixed the scrollbar issue in context menus.
I managed to reproduce the bug in some devices. A few devices didn’t produce the bug. May be it depends upon screen resolution and display card driver.
You can also disable the new context menu and restore Windows 10 style old classic context menu in Windows 11 using following tutorial:
[Tip] Restore Old Classic Context Menu (Right-Click Menu) in Windows 11
Also Check:
[Windows 10 Bug] No Borders Showing around Program Windows
[Bug Fix] Search Box in Windows 10 File Explorer Stuck or Not Responding
[Windows 10 Bug] 2 Context Menus Appear at Same Time in Taskbar
Great article again. Thanks!
Hi Vishal,
I like your blog a lot and I am looking often into it.
I also have a problem with the small fonts of WIN 11 (probably because of my age). So I appreciate your hint not to go to 125%, but to use 109% a lot. But I would like to inform you about another bug with the scaling of WIN 11. When I used the 109% scaling (or was it 111%, don’t recall), the three points in “Settings\Applications\Apps and Functionalities” were gone. I first thought it was a corrupt file in Windows setup and tried everything to repair it. There was no means, it seemed that I couldn’t uninstall any app anymore ! … But then I found out it was the scaling. It just hides the tree points (and the size of the apps in “Settings\Applications\Apps and Functionalities” !
Took me some time to find out !
Roger
^^ Interesting. The scaling in Windows 11 is really buggy.
This is a bug, I have this on my legion y540
please someone reply with the fix
I DID TONS OF REINSTALL FROM USB, LENOVO RECOVERY MEDIA, FROM SETTINGS, but IT DIDN’T WORK AT ALL !!!
pls someone help me
the fixes in this article didn’t help
It would be repaired in next few updates, I’m on a Insider build in the dev channel. I didn’t get any scroll bar on the scale of 125.
I found an easy solution to this problem. It has to do with the Nvidia context menu in windows 11. If you go to the Nvidia control panel and turn it off the problem will be solved. I guess it’s just incompatible with windows 11.
Still not fixed in stable builds!
I have the same problem after changed “Scale option”. Os build 22000.978.