New Windows 11 bug makes Task Manager replicate itself when you close it
Microsoft's Preview KB5067036 update for Windows 11 seems to have introduced an unusual bug that causes multiple instances of Task Manager to run in the background when you close it using the "X" button.
As noted by Windows Latest, each time you use the "X" button to quit Task Manager, it just replicates itself. It adds another process in the background, which consumes memory and could lead to performance issues.
We checked this on a test system and were able to verify that the bug still exists. Microsoft has yet to acknowledge the issue.
To check if you are affected by the issue, simply open Task Manager by right-clicking the taskbar and selecting Task Manager, or by pressing Ctrl+Shift+Esc on the keyboard, or using the Ctrl+Alt+Del shortcut and then selecting Task Manager from the menu.
From here, close the app by using the "X" button and see if another instance gets added to the running processes. If you have a habit of regularly opening Task Manager to check processes, this may cause some performance issues because each instance eats up a little bit of RAM, and that can quickly add up.
So far, the only workaround to this seems to be to not use the "X" button and manually right-click on each Task Manager process and select "End Task" to quit out. You can also use the taskkill command by typing taskkill /im taskmgr.exe /f in the command prompt.
Microsoft recently issued an emergency update earlier this month that fixed issues with USB devices being detected in the Windows Recovery Environment.
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