I read that quote before I posted but it was written almost 7 months ago.  Ancient text in my humble opinion.  But I think can decipher your cryptically void message and it seems to me you are trying to convey that the issue has not been resolved and you would like more dump files.  I can do that, do not need the how but I believe I may have isolated the issue on my machine.

Are you captive? Do you need help?  Blink once for yes and twice for no.  Edit:  /😉 

I should know in a few hours if my resolution has solved our problem.

Pleased to hear it but what exactly 'fixed' the issue for you?

Sean Drohan
Stardock Product Lifecycle Manager

I like Stardock products and have never had any problems with your customer service; it's always been perfectly fine.

So I hate to add my voice to this issue, but ... I too use Dragon NaturallySpeaking 15 and right-clicking on any part of the Start11 panel (if Dragon is running) instantly causes Explorer to crash and restart. This is completely reproducible. If Dragon is closed, the crash issue disappears. This also is completely reproducible.

One understands the "we can't afford to buy an expensive copy of Dragon" defense, but that doesn't really help those of us who have used it for years without any such Explorer crashes. Obviously, something in Start11 is the culprit here and there's no point in pretending otherwise.

And dare I say it, if you can't afford a legal copy of Dragon, why not simply install a pirated version of it on a test PC to help resolve this issue? Or would doing so somehow contaminate your soul or worldview or something?

It wouldn't be the end of the world and if it lead to resolving this problem, then all of us legal owners of Start11 and Dragon would be well served, and since Nuance has just been gobbled up by Microsoft, let's face it, neither of those two entities would care either.

Just a thought.

I'm on Windows 10 64 bit, 21H2 Windows Feature Experience Pack 120.2212.4180.0 and Start10 never interfered with Dragon in the slightest. Start11 won't tolerate it.

I'm aware of the difficulties in working around the strictures of the Windows Start menu, especially in Windows 11, but I don't think breezily dismissing all of we Dragon users as a tiny minority is fair or necessarily accurate.

I'd be delighted to hear of any progress towards finally identifying the cause of the Explorer crashes, especially when Dragon is a part of the mix.

What a pity that Mr RickE123, above, didn't publicly reveal his magical "fix". Did he, perchance, share it with you guys privately? If so, what did he say?

I like and applaud your products; I do hope I don't end up as bitter as some of the earlier posters on this thread appear to have become!

Please make Start11 work properly, and especially with Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Now that Microsoft owns it, it may well become much more prevalent in the near future. We're all just hoping MS doesn't screw it up as they all too often do. It'll probably end up as part of Cortana, God help us all.

But for now, Dragon version 15 is terrific and the overwhelming leader in its market space, having been developed for years and improving with every version and IMHO definitely worth supporting. (Don't forget, many of its users, those who aren't wealthy doctors or lawyers, are in fact people with physical disabilities who need its assistance.)

Best wishes from Fremantle, Western Australia

Hello,

Sorry to hear you are having trouble.

So getting to the core issue:

Since its 'completely reproducible', we would need this from you:

https://support.stardock.com/space/SHC/1347321935/Manually+Collecting+Start+Crash+Dumps

We also need to know:

• Can you reproduce it if Start11 is not installed
• Can you reproduce it with the 'Enhanced Taskbar' on\off

Sean Drohan
Stardock Product Lifecycle Manager

Hi Sean,

thank you for your very prompt reply. Like I said: my experience with Stardock customer service has always been great.

I'm very busy at present, but I will endeavour to provide the crash dumps you requested.

I guess I will have to uninstall Start11 to answer your first question, but I'm happy to do that but it might take a day or three.

I'll be back ASAP, thanks again, and congrats on a great suite of great UI enhancement programs.

I despair at how whiny so many users sound on your forum, demanding instant fixes etc, especially given your pricing is so modest. Don't let them get you down. For every whiner, there are probably a dozen happy users, so keep it up.

Cheers

The most recent START11 update 1.3.9.0 DOES NOT WORK. The TASKBAR BECOMES UNRESPOSNSIVE & DOES NOT SIZE CORRECTLY.

MOST OTHER COMPUTING APPLICATIONS AND FUNCTIONALITY FAIL TO RESPOND TO COMMANDS.

Stardock needs to immediately rework this upgrade.

Hello,
Sorry to hear you are having issues. Can we have more details on your system and issue please.

1. You on Windows 10 or 11? Need its full version number. Use Winver.exe

Also please try uninstall Start11, reboot immediately, download the latest version again, install with it. Reboot again immediately. Retest and report back. If the issue still there. Need more details on the issue would be helpful to help us figure out what is wrong with it.

Thanks
Basj,
Stardock Community Assistant.

Hi Stardock,

as requested, I have installed the weird and extremely complicated MS debugging program WinDBG, and attempted to accurately capture the Explorer crash which Start11 always causes, when its panel is right-clicked, whilst Dragon NaturallySpeaking 15 is running. As I have plainly stated before.

WinDBG created a 720MB dump file.

I have attempted to upload it to my Dropbox account, share it, and also to my MS OneDrive account. Both are unfamilar to me, at least as to "sharing with other people" is concerned. I've spent over an hour trying to achieve successful shares, but all I seem to see is "Visible to You Only". Both of these services are very keen to offer me an Upgrade for $$ to facilitate this. Perhaps this enormous file has pushed the "free amount of disk space" out of range? Who knows?

I've run out of patience.

If there is somewhere else I can send this 720 MB dump file, I'd be delighted to try. But these "friendly Cloud Sharing Sites" are not proving themselves to be so. "Click to share with anyone" never seems to work on either site.

Here are the links I have struggled to make shareable and accessible. I hope one of them works for you:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ls2ow5dquukk0fr/Start11%20Columbus1000.dmp?dl=0

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AlFOcoq0oQZ5r1PUOpiBnrI2Jnzh

It does somehow seem odd that a paying customer should be having to jump through all these hoops to help troubleshoot a software incompatibility problem that is caused by a program he has already paid for and which is obviously the cause of the problem issue in the first place. But oh well. I know you guys don't appreciate that view.

Please let me know if these meagre attempts work for you at all, or where else I could send this colossal dump file so you can actually download and examine it. Maybe I should burn it to a CD and snail mail it to you!

Dropbox and OneDrive have worn out their welcome for "easy communal sharing" with me. I must be missing something, but I've tried and tried to enable simple "sharing" with little success. Both their interfaces suck.

Maybe I could email it to you? Or send it to your own online share portal? I've tried my best.

The PC I'm working on now needs attention for other reasons, and I may not be able to help troubleshoot the Dragon / Explorer crash issue any further; but surely, it's been established by now as a Real Issue.

Please let me know if I can help in any other way; my other devices will monitor this Forum thread.

Thanks for your great products. I have faith you will solve this ghastly Explorer crash issue soon.

Best wishes.

Yes, the directions posted does detail that the file will likely be very large.  Its why in it we state to zip it:

'If you could zip it, upload it to a cloud drive service, and paste a shared link in a thread (existing or new), that would be much appreciated.'

While still large, it reduced the size of your zip to 230Mb.

But incompatibility with what app, Columbus, what is causing the issue?  We need these forensics - that only you can produce under your unique environment (PC) - to attempt so see who, what, and where.

This one did.  I will get it into an internal ticket for review.

Thank you for the time, effort, an patience, Columbus.

Sean Drohan
Stardock Product Lifecycle Manager

Thank you, Sean.

I apologise for my ranting and whinging above. I was somewhat pissed off at these "friendly free services" which sometimes aren't that friendly.

Yes, I should've zipped the file. I was so grumpy it never occurred to me. My bad.

I do hope you manage to fix the Dragon / Explorer crash issue but I daresay it is very complicated; who knows how deeply Dragon embeds itself into the OS? Quite deeply it seems, as it responds to all sorts of minor inputs, even clicking on innocent parts of the desktop.

As for my "patience", I wish I had displayed more of it. I still admire your products, never fear.

All the best from Fremantle, Western Australia

For my 2 cents, I don't use Dragon, but I do use multiple remote desktop windows. What I'm finding is when I have a remote desktop window in full screen, almost every time, I have to restart Windows Explorer because the taskbar doesn't switch to the remote computer's taskbar like it should.

I don't have this issue when I don't have start11 installed.

Hmm, amazon_devil's input there was quite enlightening.

Any development with this, Stardock guys? There's obviously something in Start11 which is nuking Expolore.exe, somehow, somewhere under some circumstances.

I'm afraid in the meantime I've given up on Start11 and gone back to Start10 which has none of these issues. Maybe there's a clue right there?

Please keep up the good work; I'm sure you'll figure it out eventually.

I'm having a similar problem; Start11 seems to work fine except that the taskbar becomes unresponsive fairly quickly; this has been happening for maybe a week.  The only way to get it back is to go within Start11 and force "restart explorer".  I used the Purge_StartALL.zip file to do a clean wipe of Start11, and did a clean install downloaded from Stardock, with all the needed reboots.  It's still losing control of the taskbar.

I'm running Windows 11 version 22H2, and it's Start11 version 1.44.

Are you also using Groupy 2?

Yes, I am.

I resolved my issue by disabling the "Search Shortcut Key" in Norton 360 settings/ Administrative Settings.  Every time I fat-fingered the keys, shift-F in my case, Start 11 would lock the system up.  

Same issue here. Seems like this issue has yet to be resolved. It is hard to believe that the developers have yet to experience this themselves. I only use Start11 for the Windows 10 taskbar

Hello,
Sorry to hear you are having issues. Please create your own thread and we will try to help your issue there. Also, please provide more details on your issue.

1. Windows 10/11 full version and OS Build number.
2. Start11 full version number.
3. List down which troubleshooting steps you already taken so we don't suggest the same steps again.

Thank you.
Basj,
Stardock Community Assistant.

There has been a few mixed 'issues' here.  As noted by basj, it would be prudent to create your own thread and provide as much detail as you can, ensuring you have the most recent version of Start11 v2 installed from your account page:

https://store.stardock.com/myaccount/products

Sean Drohan
Stardock Product Lifecycle Manager