Sometimes when going through settings on secure screens, I end up with controls of other settings panel in a settings panel, e.g. audio settings with Privacy and Security settings in the same "Privacy and Security" panel. When this happens, this can end with errors or NVDA crash.

Steps to reproduce

• From an opened session, press control+alt+del to open the secure screen where you can choose between Disconnect from session, Lock session, Change user session, Open task manager, etc.
• Press NVDA+q and choose to restart NVDA with disabled add-ons, so that you ensure that test are made without add-ons.
• When NVDA has restarted, press NVDA+control+G to open settings
• Press shift+tab back to the Categories list
• Press downArrow and maintain it pressed to move quickly across categories until the last one
• If necessary, press and maintain upArrow to turn back to first category
• If necessary, repeat these two last steps until the issue is reproduced
• Check the settings panel's content

Actual behavior

• If you visually check the settings panel content, you'll see that it contains controls from one or more others panels.
• If you tab across the settings panel to check its content, you may encounter unexpected behaviour such as:
  • tabbing after the last control of the panel does not report anything
  • if you close the settings window and try to reopen it, you can't
  • if you close the settings window, NVDA does not seem to work anymore: no speech when moving around, no exit dialog with NVDA+Q, no NVDA menu opens with NVDA+N...
  • Probable NVDA crash / restart

Expected behavior

Settings panels should be correctly displayed when switching among them and GUI bugs should not cause collateral issues.

NVDA logs, crash dumps and other attachments

• None available by default on secure screens.
• Reproduced the issue with service debug enabled in registry; log and crash dump sent privately to NV Access.

Additional information

• Issue reproduced on 2 different computers
• Could not reproduce the issue in user session, i.e. not on secure screens.

System configuration

NVDA installed/portable/running from source

Installed

NVDA version

2026.1beta3 (2026.1.0.54615)

Windows version

Windows 11 24H2 (AMD64) build 26100.7840

Name and version of other software in use when reproducing the issue

N/A

Other information about your system

N/A

Other questions

Does the issue still occur after restarting your computer?

Yes

Have you tried any other versions of NVDA? If so, please report their behaviors

I have not retried but I remember that the issue was already present on beta2 and / or beta1.
I do not remember having seen this on 2025.x, but I do not use so frequently the settings window on secure screens.

If NVDA add-ons are disabled, is your problem still occurring?

Yes: the STR includes a way to disable add-ons.

Does the issue still occur after you run the COM Registration Fixing Tool in NVDA's tools menu?

No but I have just installed beta3, so it should have been run during the install.