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Fix: Start Menu & Cortana not Opening in Windows 10

Update: It seems that the final version of Windows 10 is also affected by the issue. The start menu fails to open after upgrading from a previous version of Windows.
Windows 10 is currently available as Technical Preview which means that there are still a lot of issues and bugs which need fixing before the Operating System gets ready for use by consumers. Some users using the Windows 10 Technical Preview (build 9926) are facing an odd issue where the Start Menu (and Cortana/Search) would not work/open anymore, no matter if they click on the Start Button, Press the Windows key on the keyboard or press Ctrl + Esc. System Restore seems to be the cause of this error, but there can be more. Anyways, here’s how to sort it out.

Making the Windows 10 Start Menu Work Again

There can be multiple reasons for the broken Start Menu and as usual, one solution cannot fit everywhere. Still, you should definitely give the following a try and who knows, the Start Menu starts working again, saving you from a full reset or reinstalling Windows 10 again.

Do backup any data you’ve saved in the Modern Appsย  as all of them will be re-installed. Desktop software and apps won’t be affected though.
  1. Open Windows PowerShell as Administrator
    1. Right click Start button
    2. Choose Command prompt (Admin)
    3. Key in Powershell in the black window and hit Enter
  2. Paste the following command in the Administrator: Windows PowerShell window and press Enter key:
    Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml"}
  3. Wait for PowerShell to execute and complete the command. Ignore the few errors (in red color) that may pop up.
  4. When it finishes, try hitting Start and hopefully it’ll start working. If not, this solution won’t apply to you, unfortunately.windows 10 start button and menu

Are you able to solve it for you by following the procedure mentioned above or it fails? If it it fails, do make sure that you ran Powershell as Administrator (window will be called Administrator: Windows PowerShell ) and gave the command enough time to execute.

Other Fixes Suggested by Visitors

Uninstall Dropbox and then Disable AutostartRobert Gavick suggested in comments that uninstalling dropbox fixed the issue for him. So if you have dropbox installed on your Windows 10 PC, just uninstall it. You can then re-install it, but set it to not to autostart at boot.

Boot into Safe ModeDebbie W. mentioned in comments that booting the PC into safe mode and then normally fixed this problem on multiple PCs. Others have also confirmed it to be working for them. So do give it a shot if you’ve exhausted all other options. Read more in her comment.

Uninstall CCleaner or Avast AntiVirus – CCleaner and Avast AntiVirus are two known softwares culprit of causing this error. So if you have any of these installed, just get rid of them soon.

Still no luck? You can get everything to work fine by creating a new user account and working under it. You will lose some of your user data, but most of the files and documents can be transferred over by copying the data from Desktop, Documents, Pictures and other libraries.

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  • How f’n stupid is windows again? Only in this alternate reality can windows be running most computers, and yet have such idiotic problems. If I didn’t need this crappy program for work, I surely would NOT buy it.

  • I remember Unix. I remember Spectrum. I remember mini-computers and mainframes. I remember DOS. I remember Linux. I remember Windows 3.1, Windows for Workgroups,………And in the year 2017 I have Windows 10 Professional.

    How old is Windows 10? Well, if Windows 3.0 is from 1990, previous versions were extremely shaky, let’s say Windows is old, well 27 years. Hey boys and girls, 27 (twenty-seven) years!!!!

    And 27 years later, what do we have from the Gates evil empire? We have a so called “Professional” product that looses hotkeys, blocks it’s central command / Start button, blocks Notifications and forces users to distroy everything in boot partition and start whole process of installation and settings over and over again…. And what does the evil empire say? Pretty much – nothing. Or as one user said – it just brush us off.

    Maybe we deserve that – who knows?

  • I have had countless problems with windows 10. My PC had to be returned for a new main board since then programs sometimes work sometimes don’t, the Lower symbols on the F keys have never worked. It has now decided not to open Mail on the windows app store without which I cant fix the mail. The start menu starts OK but neither the mail box in the start menu or outlook are working. Outlook opens but shows no mail. Tried to correct mail account settings but wont got passed a certain point even though the correct password has been input. I’m am well fed up with it and if it wasn’t for employment reasons, I am trying to do and online IT course, I wouldn’t be using Windows as also had a Mac book which I can honestly say is well worth the money. No worries about virsues etc with that run like a dream even though its an older model. How can I now get my mail to open, luckily I can use my phone but will need outlook later for the course Desperate for advice

  • If none of the solutions proposed in this article worked, you can try to suppress the child keys under this registry key :
    HKEY_Local_Machine\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Appx\AppxAllUserStore\UpdatedApplications
    Worked fine for me

  • what if a new user account still doesn’t fix the unresponsive taskbar? I already did everything I could search in google and here, please i can’t even reset my laptop, its saying ‘an error has occured. No changes has been made.” I dont know what to do now,

    • That’s so unfortunate, Evan. Did your laptop come with some sort of recovery media? You might be able to use that to reset the system to the factory state.

      • Sadly, I don’t have any recovery media that came with the laptop. Further, it seems that even in Safe Mode, the taskbar is still unresponsive some changes that I did was deleting a certain folder called TileDataLayer which does nothing for me.

        • Now in this situation, Evan. I believe a full re-install of Windows using a bootable USB/DVD will be your last option. You might want to bring it to the store from where you purchased it.
          Or if you can do it yourself, you can download the ISO files from Microsoft and create a bootable USB drive to re-install Windows.

  • Hallo mates,
    I have same problem with the start menu and other menu parts of windows ledge, what accured now, after 6 months of smooth, good run of win10. Trouble is, that r-click on programs running also does not work so I am not able to run powershell as admin. Have tried other options mentioned here and on other forums, like SFC /SCANNOW command, whitch found NO data corruption, re-run the explorer etc, only power shell as non-admin does not work (access denied ofc.). I dont use avast (t-630 or symantec, here users dont comply on similar problems) but one last installation of other software (in my case was trial version of acrobat) tried to force me to install avast, whitch I cannot find under my programs cause I declined the installation in the process. For users who have simillar problem i really recommend to install C-Cleaner and run library fix to clean avast out of temporatory files, libraries etc, than reboot and run the windows backup to previous system saved point (dont do a point yourself cause avast will again appear). Than uninstall c-cleaner and reboot again. Fixed for me – good luck.

  • my son gave me a gift a Lenovo laptop (windows 10) but every time I want to do something in the computer because is on my son-in law names (john) appears on the screen and in some others program.how can I remove my son-in law names and install mine’

  • And how do you open Windows Powershell? This is sorely insufficient instruction; it’s the web, so why haven’t you hotlinked instructions to an explanation what that is and instructions where to find it and how to open it? We’re already frustrated that the start menu isn’t working so where are we supposed to find this? Instead I have to go open another browser page to find out. I think I’ll use another set of instructions instead since this started poorly for me.

    • Oh wow! Maybe you didn’t actually read this out. The very first step has a 3-point instructions on how to open powershell.

      • Does anyone here have an issue with cortana search box not working but start button does? if so, can you open the “Cortana and search settings” menu? I can start typing that, it shows up, but clicking it does nothing. Im curious to know if that is apparent for anyone els too.

  • This has happened to me twice now in the last year. First time creating a local account worked. Yesterday it happened again and I cannot even create a new account… I found the best fix; …… Windows 7 Reinstalled. Microsoft should be totally ashamed of touting a new OS that added a start button to fix complaints in Win 8 and this is the result. Win7 until 2020 for this company.

  • I have done all of the above and start menu, task bar and sometimes task manager (from ctrl+alt+del) will not run. Windows update is non-existent. Windows 10 reminds me too much of Windows ME which prior to Windows 10 was the worst operating system Microsoft ever had. Windows 10 is crap.

  • hi . am having this problem – my start edge playstore notifications and rightclick on task bar are not working ! I have tried all possible solutions i found on the net – using powershell ,scannow,dism cmd( it shows source file not found),start menu trouble shooter(apps not installed properly error found but could not automatically fix it ),restarting/ending explorer,regedit.exe checking , killing RuntimeBroker, opening in safe mode,disabling fast reboot ,toggling start menu and task bar , adding new account(which i was not able to do in settings only from cmd i was able to do )and finally reinstalled windows 10 with keep my files option .It just doesnt seem to work ! Please please someone tell me how to fix this . its driving me crazy .
    Thanks in advance

  • I get this problem from time to time. I don’t know why, but the following worked for me:
    1. Right click Start button
    2. Choose Command prompt (Admin)
    3. Type in SFC/SCANNOW
    4. When it’s done (it will probably tell you it found no problem), restart the computer.

  • Alternative way, so to settings > Personalization > Start > Turn off “Use Full Screen”.

    Restart the computer. This worked for me.

  • While researching why Start wasn’t working on one of my systems, I saw mention of disabling shell extensions which seemed a valid thing to check. There’s a small program to view shell extensions, but I don’t know its creator: ShellMenuView

    Running it shows lot of stuff but after sorting by Company names, one thing that I noticed was that Malwarebytes had installed a shell extension. I was sure their shell extension wasn’t needed, so I uninstalled the program to see what would happen and BAM!, my Start button started working again.

    And another happy customer. Whew!

  • Start menu and search was stuck.
    After following this procedure it initially did not work, but after a reboot it worked without going in to safe mode or uninstalling dropbox.
    Please add this suggestion as this worked.

    Kind regards,

    Martijn Kamminga

  • dear all, after trying everything above, and many other fixes, I gave up. I deleted the user account that was having the issue (going into settings from my administrator account), restarted the computer, then re-added the damaged profile. BINGO. Worked. I did have to add back a few programs to the user profile, but most items were restored automatically as part of the outlook.com user profile. so all in all, it took less time to just start over with a fresh user profile.

    hope this helps anyone else who is at the end of their rope.

  • This is so frustrating for me. Not a whiz on the computer but I can follow the much appreciated simple steps listed by others. I have tried almost every single solution listed above and nothing works.
    restarting in safe mode
    uninstalling dropbox
    uninstalling our Security System (ESET)

    I can’t seem to add a new user…which is a last resort. Can anyone walk me though trying to install a new user? It wont allow me to which is why I am having the issue.

    I also have an issue with Excell, which can open existing files, but if I save an excell file that was emailed to me I can’t open. It states that I can’t open the file as I don’t have enough memory…trust me not the case.
    Any additional suggestions from anyone? Solutions above have fixed the other computers in our office, but not mine. :-/

    We didn’t have any issues when we bought the computer with Windows 10, but some update along the way created the problem.

  • Thanks, it worked for me, but the same problem crops up every now and then. I am wondering if and when Microsoft will permanently solve this issue…

  • Mine hasn’t been working for almost a week, I’ll admit I was very skeptical but this actually worked! I’m so so happy! Thanks!

  • Thanks so much for suggesting Restart in Safe Mode. I upgraded to Windows 10 from Win8 a few months ago, and all was working fine. Last week I had a day when I could not get a right click menu to select recently opened documents and then noticed the Start Menu would not work. I restart each day, so one day it did work, and then several days it didn’t. I finally searched for the issue. I tried restarting the “Tile Data Model Server” service, restarting the WindowsExplorer process, entering that code into admin Powershell, adding the Registry edit to add UseExperience, I do not have Dropbox, CCleaner or Avast on my PC. When I finally restarted into Safe Mode by going Windows Explorer to Control Panel, Recovery and followed the steps until I could select Enable Safe Mode on restart. The menu came up and I selected Safe Mode. Once there, I checked and things were working. I rebooted and right click on Taskbar as well as the Start Menu work again. Super Sweet! ๐Ÿ˜€

  • Not sure how starting it up in safe mode and restarting in normal mode worked…. But, thank you so very much. Now I’m contemplating going back to Windows 7.

  • OMGOSH it worked!!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH! I’ve been like this for weeks and finally decided to look online for answers. Thank you!

  • Guys,
    This is a problem associated with Dropbox.
    The best way to solve the “Critical Errorโ€ message is to uninstall the Dropbox application.

    1. Launch control panel (right click on the start menu)
    2. Go to the Programs.
    3. Uninstall Dropbox
    4. Reboot.

    Now the menu , search , cortana should work normally.
    You can re-install Dropbox app now but remember to disable the launch of Dropbox at the Windows start.

  • Quick and Easy fix for Start, Search, Notification and other system icons not working or missing on Task Bar!
    After trying different fixes that didn’t work, I have fixed mine, my husband’s and my mom’s (Windows 10 Home) computers that had this same issue. The following was a very quick and easy fix……..
    1. Go to your Desktop and right click anywhere then hover your cursor over “New” and then click “Shortcut”.
    2. When you are making the shortcut it will ask you to โ€œType the location of the itemโ€, Type in “msconfig” (without quotation marks) then click “Next” then it will ask you to โ€œType a name for this shortcutโ€, name it anything you want, just something you can remember and identify for this procedure. Click “Finish”.
    3. The shortcut you just created for msconfig will show up on your desktop. Double click to open the shortcut to bring up the “System Configuration” box and click on the “Boot” tab at the top. Once in the boot tab, (with your current OS highlighted) underneath “Boot options” click to enable “Safe boot” then click to enable “Network” underneath Safe boot and then click “Apply” then “OK” and restart when prompted.
    4. Your system will be restarted in Safe Mode. (If you see a blue error box that says, โ€œThis app can’t open……can’t be opened using the Built-in Administrator account. Sign in with a different account and try again.โ€….just click โ€œCloseโ€.) Then go back to the msconfig shortcut you created double clicking to open “System Configuration” box again and click on the “Boot” tab at the top. Once in the boot tab, with your current OS highlighted, underneath “Boot options” click to disable “Safe boot” then click “Apply” and “OK” and restart again. Things should return to normal. I hope this helps!

    • This one worked for me as well, thank you!

      P.s. You could also open msconfig by right clicking start menu, opening ‘Run’ and entering ‘msconfig’ in the textbox.

    • You are a L E G E N D !!!!! I’ve been cracking my head on how to fix this stupid issue and now have finally found the answer.

      Thank you Thank you Thank you!!!

    • Thank you so much, Debbie W! Your instructions were wonderfully clear and effective. You should be paid! The only strange thing that happened for me is that I did get that blue error box you mentioned, but I didn’t have to re-do the operation because my Start and Search buttons started working without it. Thanks again!

    • holaaa … mil gracias !!! esto me soluciono el problema, con el otro al rato seme iba .. ya me va bien… no se que le abran echo pa que no fuera, apenas cojo el pc solo mi marioo y mi hijay mira que les digo que cuando no sepan algo que lo pregunten …. uffff casi todos los dias estoy arreglandolo … sino es por una cosa otraa… en fin… mil graciasss!!! ???????

    • Debbie, thanks for the simple suggestion, but unfortunately this one did not work for me either. There’s one strange thing I found though. When right-clicking on the desktop, and selecting “New”, my computer lists (Empty) as the only “option”. There was no folder, shortcut, etc to choose from. Does this indicate anything to you?

      So, to run msconfig, I did Window+R, and typed “msconfig” instead of doing it by shortcut as you suggested.

      • I should add, I have already uninstalled dropbox, I only have Norton antivirus installed, and this missing menu is only affecting one of the three users on this brand new Windows 10 computers. There is nothing unique about my daughter’s user account, yet she is solely affected.

    • Thanks Debby; tried a lot of other fixes but this simple start in safe mode worked. Plus a neat way to get to safe mode ๐Ÿ™‚

    • I LOVE YOU!!! After a mind-boggling 12-ish hours trying to figure out how to fix this, I found your suggestion and it worked for me! Thank you SO much!

    • Thanks so much for taking the time to write this out. I’ve been running into the non working start menu and no right click options on task bar icons when creating new accounts on Windows 10. This has been happening on many Win 10 systems (Home and Pro) I support.

      Safe Mode using your guide resolved the issue.

      Thanks again Deb. As a result of finding your post I have a little bit of hair left on my head.

      I love you sooooooo much Microsoft……

  • Thanks! This appears to have solved the “last link” of a “my bad” attempt at renaming the user profile directory for the “hidden admin” account after it was accidentally confusingly “at unveiling time” incorrectly named. It saved a total system restore. Not suggested for the faint of heart but I guessed wrong by assuming the windows 7 method might work. This technique of creating a temporary admin authorized ID, logging in with that and renaming the C:\Users\wrongname to C”\Userd\rightname. Then I went into the registry (as if in Win 7) and updated as explained here: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/19834.how-to-rename-a-windows-7-user-account-and-related-profile-folder.aspx and then I restarted Windows 10. Not only would the Startup window and the wireless network table not display, but my apps were failing one by one (old-school ones; I don’t use the new cute-app suite so much, well none of them at all actually). Firefox wouldn’t even load so I went to another PC for some research and decided to do a trial of Registry Workshop, find all occurrences of \Users\wrongname and do a global change to \Users\rightname. I had to re-run it and reboot 3 times and ended up with about 15 items that were locked and couldn’t be changed but continued on anyway. At this point after a re-boot, all the old-school apps seemed to be working again but still with the exception of the Start Menu (I use Classic Shell but still an issue) and the wireless selection menu. Running your script seems to have brought everything back to life; so thanks! True, I could have probably just created a new account except for the fact I am using the main administrator account (detesting the “admin-like” accounts while with them being “are you sured to death” with the security “features” that keep getting added to Windows has me choosing the admin account, worth the risk to be productive since human conditioning after time makes one always say “yes” to the “are you sure?” questions without even reading the dialog after a short period of time anyway. But all talks of Windows politics and “admin police” aside, I got what I wanted and that’s a working Windows 10 admin account renamed. Will keep my fingers crossed nothing else pops up. Maybe it will force the choice for system updates to come back. (Joke.) Did I tell you how much I detest Windows 10 yet? I am sure you’ve heard it before. The final demise of user control. Just another iteration here of the eagle and the mouse – the last act of defiance ๐Ÿ˜‰

    • There is MUCH more user control in Windows 10. You just need to discover the new ways of doing things. ๐Ÿ™‚
      I would never go back to Windows 7. I have converted all my 5 PCs to 10 successfully and all run much faster and more reliably.
      I am a technician so I do have advantages over the average home user, so I can sympathize with those users. Of course they are not expected to know the technical side, and perhaps (because Windows 10 is so much more security conscious) those users will see more “problems” which they may not be able to fix themselves. They think it is Windows 10 that is causing the problems, when in fact the setup on their machine is not correct. Anyway, keep at it. The release in September of the “Anniversary” release of Windows 10 may improve things for you. All the best. ๐Ÿ™‚

  • that was awsome……..it worked for me……….actually i don’t believe in such web ideas……but…after this worked for me ….i have to change my mind set…….thanks for whom ever the person behind this great idea…..may god bless google…….

    • I have discovered an easy way to fix this problem (which is caused by memory leaks from the programs
      running on the Windows Desktop (when you click the Start Button or press the Windows key on your keyboard).
      Simply do the following:

      1. Create a batch file using notepad and call it (for want of a better name) “FixLockedDesktopProcs.cmd”
      2. Type the following instructions in the batch file:
      @echo off
      cd %SystemDirectory%
      Taskkill /F /IM Runtimebroker.exe > nul
      RuntimeBroker.exe
      3. Save the batch file to somewhere on your computer, then create a desktop shortcut to it.

      Whenever the Start Menu or Cortana or Windows Edge cease functioning, simply run this batch file
      by double-clicking on the desktop shortcut.

      It is quicker than restarting or logging off then back on.

      Deeper insight into why this problem is happening can be found at this link under “Memory Leaks”:
      http://www.groovypost.com/howto/runtimebroker-exe-process-windows-8-running/

      I hope this discovery helps others.

      • Thank you Chris, that actually worked. It even fixed up a couple other issues I was having. Like the fact that Outlook wasn’t making a sounds when I received new mail.

      • Sorry to say, this fix is not working for me. I’ve already tried the “do a windows update” solution, and what it seems to me after much research is there is no actual Microsoft SOLUTION to this issue. Most people cannot deal with this kind of problem, having to use “run” menu commands to navigate the computer. It’s ridiculous to me.

    • My windows 10 worked correctly until it updated today. then right clicking on any of the programs wouldn’t bring up a menu. this fix worked great for me. Thank you very much.

  • I tried all of the above and id didn’t work at all. It is a ROYAL PAIN to have to set up a new account because I use Thunderbird mailer which looks for profiles under the old user name, and I don’t see a way to transfer those files since under the new user name, the files under /users/oldname are not visible.

  • You’ve gotta love a tutorial to fix your unworking Start menu and the first step is to click the Start menu.

    If I could do that I wouldn’t need to fix it.

    • There’s a difference between a left click and a right click. If it doesn’t respond on a right click either, then this doesn’t apply to you ๐Ÿ™‚

  • Thank you so so so so so Much!
    I’ve trying since last 2 weeks and could not able to figure it out!
    But finally your thread (y)

  • I was just watching a movie on a Windows 10 computer. It restarted itself in the middle of a movie, and is installing updates right now. No warning, no option to postpone. Thanks Microsoft. I am installing 7 tomorrow and fck you.

    • Windows 10 schedules an automatic restart which is forced at some time. Usually it is scheduled during the time a PC is left idle. Probably your media player didn’t made the system feel like somersetting was running.

  • Great suggestion but it didn’t work, unfortunately – I’ll give it a bit longer to see if it works eventually, but I’m not very hopeful. My Windows 10 was fine until the Start Menu stopped working yesterday, Thanks, anyway.

  • Nothing works for me on this Win 10 disaster. I gave up on Windows a year ago and now do 99% of my work with my Mac. But, I use one program on my PC (Paint) and now I can’t use it because I can’t access it on my PC. I’m ov the same opinion as Narender Singh above – we users shouldn’t be the testing ground for MS.

  • Nice! Nothing else worked on my Surface Pro 3 until this. No fixes from MS Support solved the problem. My Start Button and Taskbar both work as expected now. (My Start Menu needs a little rebuilding; it looks like it was hit by digital shrapnel, but otherwise everything looks good.) Unbelievable that Microsoft’s OS requires these types of fixes from enlightened third parties such as yourself. It was a godsend for me, but fixes like this are functionally impractical for the general population to employ.

  • Spent so much time trying to get my computer to work with Windows 10 that I might as well not even have one. All it does is update fill up my drive or have some problem.

  • We shouldn’t have to go through these geeky machinations. We’re users, not techies. It’s irresponsible of MicroS**t to release an operating system that’s such a piece of garbage.

    • I fully agree with you, William. The past years have been all the same. Microsoft doesn’t have a clear strategy. They keep trying things, abandoning them and switching over to trying something new. It is always done internally, but MS here is using End Users for this testing.

    • quit shitting your pants, stop crying like a baby and get with it, Bend down and thank Microsoft for keeping such an evolution going for years, millions of people have jobs, idiot.

    • If creating a new user account has failed you as well, I’m afriad to say that resetting the PC would be your only option.

  • i got the same problem and when i used this command powershell show “53 activities not show”..what does this mean?

  • That worked!! I can log on in a second and don’t have to wait 20-30 seconds. Right click menu on the task bar icons is responsive again. Also left click on the task bar battery icon, wifi icon, speaker icon all are fast again. Strange that only my Surface Pro 3 had the problem but on my Dell laptop no issues. They both have the same Windows 10 Pro 10586 Build.

  • I had a similar issue. My normal user account could get to the start menu, but clicking the cortana menu or trying to search in the start menu wouldn’t do anything.

    I saw a post where a suggestion was to create a new account and copy my files over from the old to the new using an admin account. Tried it. It worked fine BEFORE I copied the files over, but after the copy I had the same result but didn’t have access to the start menu at all.

    So, I started experimenting with the file system. Setting groups of directories to .old and then logging into my normal account and see if it fixed the problem to gradually narrow down the problem. After about 45 minutes, I narrowed it down to a file in C:\Users\Brian\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\UsrClass.dat.

    I changed this UsrClass.dat to UsrClass.old.dat. When you log in, Windows doesn’t find UsrClass.dat and creates a new one, but now Cortana is working and I can search in the start menu and nothing in the start menu has changed. There must have been some kind of bad data in that file.

  • I try everything I found on google, but menu not working, then I try Windows repair from Tweaking.com and this utility help me painless.

  • Best solution I found was connecting to Microsoft help chat. They worked with to figure out that this version was corrupted. They reinstalled a healthy version for me. Save yourselves the headache and contact them.

  • I have updated my windows 7 to windows ten, i have sony vaio fit e 15… menu bar doesnt open. But i dont know wha powershell is and how can i become an admin? Th
    anks

  • Worked nicely thank you, had the problem for some time – i am using Avast Antivirus free and CCleaner (since today)

  • Worked for me, but, unfortunately, the same problem occurred twice more by now. What the heck is causing it?

    • 2 known culprits I’m aware of are- Avast Antivirus and ccleaner. Do you happen to have one of these?

    • I have eventually fixed this after trying all the for mentioned fixes and it seems a corrupt log file was the issue. If you have an event ID of 412 in Application logs (Right Start –> Click –> Run –> eventvwr.exe) – check this for these events indicatring a log file and browse to the location then rename the log that is indicated and then reboot.

      Example with the path:
      svchost (2288) TILEREPOSITORYS-1-5-21-527542830-3975116416-1082821314-1001: Unable to read the header of logfile C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\TileDataLayer\Database\EDB00046.log. Error -530.

  • Thanks..i have been searching for the best solution…until I’m thinking of giving up.
    I’ve tried this solution and my problem was fixed. I was supposed to post here the image as a proof…bytheway thank you.

  • Narender,

    you are a master! I followed your instructions and I recovered the start menu and the Store. The only thing not working is Cortana, but I can live without her for now…

    Thanks so much!

    • Re Cortana: you need to make sure that your location settings are set to US-EN. This is for now the only location where its enabled.

  • My start and store buttons are not working……i followed the directions to running the powershell under the administrator: windows powershell….how long does this process take, its been running about 15 minutes now.

  • Unfortunately Windows 10 has wreaked havoc with my PC and absolutely no fixes including your suggestion has worked. I found a back door in the task manager (typing in explore) to at least access my personal files to save on external hardrive. Some programs I had, win 10 turned into apps which are now not accessible. Again going through a back doir into programs allowed me to save to desk top where I could transport to external. I will be removing win 10 and advise all to not download win 10 free. It’s a hit n miss program and don’t want others to go through what I and others have gone through.
    Thanks for you help tho

  • None of the fixes are working for me. I’m seriously choked right now as I am unable to access any of my files on my PC.

  • I could not open menu other than right click. Tried scan fsc/scannow and said all okay. Could not paste error message but tried starting on/off did not fix…tried re-start when page open and message error said an App preventing re-starting and did I wish to proceed ? did so and shut down and re-started on auto and then Menu 10 all okay and start working again ?? not sure what worked me or time but re-start picked up an App causing a problem sooo…….

  • did not work for me, have tried all thwe trix and fixes for this problem and nothing seems to work, no start menu, no search…nothing in taskbar will work, cale.exe not working, edge not working and a few other windows apps not working….not sure where to go from here except to reinstall windows 7 the redo windows 10…any thoughts?

  • It actually worked, thank you so much. I’ve been looking for a solution for days now and resetting my Windows was not an option. Thank you : )

    • Yep sounds like it, but still pretty troublesome to import docs, files and a lot of apps need reinstalling. Still better than reinstalling Windows though ๐Ÿ™‚

  • I’ve run the powershell fix which worked however I now have a similar problem to Mark, annoyingly it means I cannot download images such as those created on canva.com which quite key for me. I didn’t even think an app could impact the download of an image and I’ve tried via google and explorer edge and it doesn’t work.
    Any idea how to fix those apps?
    Many thanks

  • Ive run the powershell fix which worked however I now have a similar problem to Mark, annoyingly it means I cannot download images such as those created on canva.com which quite key for me. I didn’t even think an app could impact the download of an image and I’ve tried via google and explorer edge and it doesn’t work.
    Any idea how to fix those apps?
    Many thanks

  • After I performed this, some of my microsoft applications now appear as follows: @{microsof.GetStarted and cannot be opened. Any solution?

  • I tried this method, unfortunately it didn’t worked out. In some of the PC’s its working fine and in some its not. So there is an alternative for it. You can use the .BAT file to solve the issue. Download the .BAT from here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1p-7ya9G3bBX1RTYmNtRnF3UDA/view?pref=2&pli=1 Its just 6.2 KB. Anyhow, thanks admin for the post. Bookmarked this site

    Source: http://www.silentpoints.com/windows/taskbar-startmenu-cortana-fixes/

  • how do I run powershell as an admin, if I canยดt open it since menu… could you please explain a liitle more, remember we are not all pc genious

    • Open windows task manager by right clicking on the taskbar. Once task manager is open, click file, then run new task. Type in powershell and click the box that says create this task with administrative privileges. Then click OK. This should get you to powershell.

    • It worked!

      But… first of all, how can you open windows powershell if start menu isnยดt working?

      Open a file, go to C: and then make a search… “powershell”… youยดll get a lot of files, I used the one named powershell.common, there you can find the powershell, right mouse button, run as administrator, and… Voila, it worked

      if you cannot find it yet, copy at the address bar

      C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0

      and there you get it

  • Thanks this worked fine for my laptop. I tried several other fixes that did not work. So very relieved this worked thanks again!

  • This means nothing at all to me. You use sophisticated computer expressions which are meaningless. I installed Windows 10 in September 2015, after a great deal of prompting and pressure from Microsoft. IT HAS BEEN AN UNMITIGATED DISASTER!
    My system has drastically slowed down in almost every respect. Today the start menu won’t open, I cannot access any programmes. To open my internet connection I had to first open Skype from list beside Desktop.
    I wish to revert ot Windows 7 as soon a spossible so I can continue my work.

  • In addition to the above problem, Windows 10 will not work with my Avast virus checker. When the virus checker is on no task bar, no start menu, no printers, no access to anything. Switch off the virus checker it all comes back. Now lets see – shall I have a virus checker or windows 10? How do you get back to Windows 8.1?

      • I received this reply from Avast: The Cortana and Start button issue, are unfortunately related to Windows 10, this is a known issue with Windows which millions of Microsoft users are currently facing. Unfortunately there are a lot of triggers with this issue and unfortunately it has been known that Avast can trigger this issue also.
        So far we have found that the fix described in this article has been the most reliable: https://www.techmesto.com/fix-start-menu-broken-windows-10-technical-preview/
        I have already tried a number of fixes and they work for a time – but the problem comes back.
        I went back to windows 8.1 last night! If it is under a month since you ‘upgraded’ to windows 10 you can get back through opening the Start menu and select Settings. Click the โ€œUpdate & securityโ€ icon and select โ€œRecovery.โ€ You should see a โ€œGo back to Windows 7โ€ or โ€œGo back to Windows 8.1โ€ option. Click the Get started button to get rid of your Windows 10 install and restore your previous Windows. I left it to work overnight and all back to ‘normal’ this morning.

  • Worked great. Thanks. Solved the problem in five minutes. Should have looked for this before I wasted two hours in chat with Microsoft support!

  • Thanks a lot………………..man
    it worked and i am able to get windows and search working again……..

  • I did this once and it broke about 15 of my apps.

    The only way I could get the apps back was to do a complete re-install of Windows 10.

    Problem with that is if you re-install windows 10 when it is already installed, there is no way back to a previous version Windows 8.2 for example.

    I did it anyway and that solved my start menu problem and fixed all the broken apps.

    After that Windows 10 worked for a while with no problems, but then the original start menu problem re-occurred and I was back to square one. A subsequent update seemed to fix it again temporarily but now I am there again.

    There is no way I am going to risk the nauseous process of re-installing Windows 10 from scratch again, it takes hours. So I am hoping that Microsoft will do an update that solves this problem once and for all, it is the most fundamental activity of the operating system and as such should be completely bullet proof. Sadly it isn’t

    • Downgrading to previous version of Widows is a temporary option anyways though and it is only there for 30 days, if I’m not wrong.
      One thing that you can try is create a new user account and use that. There’s high chance that the Start menu will work in the new account. And most of your apps/softwares will be available there, without the user data ofcourse.
      Also, if you haven’t tried it, did you restart the PC? Because Windows 10 loses its Start Menu temporarily after hours of continuous operation and a restart fixes it.

      • I am happy with Windows 10 when it works, so going back to a previous version wasn’t really what I wanted. I have read about setting up as a new user as a solution, so when I have time I will try that.

        Just so you know I switch my PC off each evening but I do tend to leave it on all day, so perhaps that is a problem. I will power off and on again to see if that works. But again, you really shouldn’t need to do that.

        Thanks for the feedback though, it is appreciated.

  • Tried your method and it worked!!! Thanks. But whenever I restart the PC, the same problem recurs, Is there a permanent way to resolve the issue?

    • There is some conflicting app/software installed on your system which is causing it to happen again. In case you have CCleaner or Avast Anti Virus, remove them as these 2 are known conflicts.

  • It worked. Thanks so much!

    I waited about 5 minutes before I did anything to anyone trying this for the first time or anyone who had any trouble with it.

  • Just my search was broken. This not only didn’t work, but it broke my start icon and installed a virus on my computer. Don’t do this.

  • I can’t open Powershell. Whether I try to run it via the windows open or make a shortcut and ‘run as admin’ it just blinks/closes. I’ve even tried to make a new user account with no luck. Just won’t create. Don’t know what to do and don’t want to do a repair install and lose all my programs. Any other suggestions?

  • What worked for me was to do a shutdown using “%windir%\System32\shutdown.exe /s /t 0”, I created a desktop shortcut and pasted the path (without inverted commas. Last character is a numeric zero) into the target line. When you click on the shortcut it shuts the computer down. When restarted the start button worked. Did this on x2 PCs and it fixed the problem on both.

    • That’s stupid, that’s just shutting down the computer.

      Also, you can just type “Shutdown /s /t 0” or, more efficiently, “shutdown /r /t 0” to reboot.

      But rebooting does the same thing!!

  • Hi.Thank you. But unfortunately it didnt work for me. the error occurs ( Access is denied ) . I typed it in cmd as admin. but dont know why it occurs. help me plz

  • 2 hours on the download screen on powershell (as admin) and nothing is happening , just tells me its been initialized and sits there blinking at me , how can they get away with making us fix their broken crap ???

      • No, nothing I’ve tried can fix them. This guy should really remove this fix and post a fix for this fix, because now I can’t use Windows Store or any other Windows app.

        • Honestly speaking Cannash, this was not supposed to cause that. All that it was to do is to re-install those system apps. If Microsoft is so fucked up to have left such issues in their Operating System, I really can’t help. All I know is that this post has helped MANY and there was a very rare percentage of them who faced this issue or probably nobody uses that Windows store. Speaking of myself, I did not face such a thing when I used this.
          The reason that your store and Windows apps are not opening is something else. Not this seriously. Initiated by this, but the reason is something else. Also, are you upgraded to the latest public release of Windows 10? MS has pushed a new update in the not-so-distant past.
          And and.. Would you please try running the same thing over again and see if this fixes it? IF not do give a try to manually reinstall an app, say Calculator.

  • Ran CMD as admin, got into powershell, did command perfect, gave a crapload of red errors. When it finished I restarted PC, no change. Start menu nor Cortana search work at all. Tried SFC, no errors. Virus scan came up clean. Chkdsk on startup counts down from 10 and stops at 5 seconds, then just boots into Windows without any keys being hit. ‘check disk’ option under hard drive properties finds no problems. Safe mode doesn’t change start menu/cortana failure. Running out of options before wiping PC.

  • Get-AppXPackage : Access is denied.
    Access is denied.
    At line:1 char:1
    + Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopm …
    + ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo : NotSpecified: (:) [Get-AppxPackage], UnauthorizedAccessException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : System.UnauthorizedAccessException,Microsoft.Windows.Appx.PackageManager.Commands.GetApp
    xPackageCommand

    • It shouldn’t actually do that, but I wouldn’t deny that there are certain cases when that actually happens. Blame it on Microsoft for messing a lot of things in Windows 10.

    • yeah seems to have broken all those things on my computer, but I’d rather have the taskbar working. The only thing I’ll probably miss is the calculator but I can replace that too I suppose.

  • When I key in Powershell in Command prompt (Admin) and hit enter, no new window pops up, and “Administrator: Command Prompt” becomes “Administrator: Command Prompt – Powershell” not “Administrator: Windows Powershell”.
    I tried entering the given code in “Administrator: Command Prompt – Powershell”, but nothing happens.

    • That title is okay as it seems they changed the name in latest update. When you paste the command and press enter, just nothing happens? No error or movement? That’ actually very strange.

      • Okay, thanks.
        Well, something did happen. I green field did pop up after I pasted the command and hit enter. I can’t exactly remember what it said, something with “process” and a file location. However, after that popped up, the window seemed to freeze, for I could not type in any more text or anything. I’m not sure if that’s a problem or not.
        But all that said, today, when I logged on, the start menu opened like it never had a problem! Does shutting my computer down have anything to do with that?
        Regardless of what the problem is, it’s working now. Thank you!

        • Yes. In Windows 10, when you keep the PC running for like half a day, loaded with work or games, the start menu will initially start showing and if you continue to use the PC then will then eventually stop opening. A restart is all you need in such a situation.
          If your PC was not running for multiple hours, then the code pasted in the Powershell might have helped. I can’t say for sure ๐Ÿ™‚ Your start menu is back to work and that’s what we needed, no matter how it happened. Enjoy!

  • Windows key is still not working. And now neither is Windows Store and Calculator. You should remove this “solution”, really, or find out how to back it out.

  • Just gives the message:
    Deployment operation progress: C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\Microsoft.VCLibs.120.00_12.0.21005.1_x86__8wekyb3d8bbwe\App
    Initialized
    and nothing more happens ???

  • Your Windows PowerShell as Administrator command worked!!!! I have been working on this for days. Thank you!!!

  • Thanks, this worked couple of times but not any more!
    Cannot open the Command Prompt with admin (popup window appears asking permission to change the pc but nothing after that), still cannot open start window, no settings, …
    How can I go back to Win 7 or 8? !!!

    • You cannot downgrade at this stage. You may either do a clean install or use the recovery system that your PC manufacturer provided.

    • If no way to go back (without a clean install) how to get Command Prompt or PowerShell open with admin rights?
      When attempting to open Command Prompt (Admin) it opens a pop-up window asking “Do you want to allow this app to make changes to your PC?”
      Whan answering “Yes” the window disappeares but nothing happens after that, nothing.
      The command prompt window doesn’t open.

  • That issue was starting to wear on me, but this worked like a charm. Thanks a lot and ahappy new year to you all.

  • That’s what appeard

    Add-AppxPackage : Deployment failed with HRESULT: 0x80073D06, The package could not be installed because a higher
    version of this package is already installed.
    Windows cannot install package Microsoft.NET.Native.Runtime.1.1_1.1.23118.0_x86__8wekyb3d8bbwe because it has version
    1.1.23118.0. A higher version 1.1.23406.0 of this package is already installed.
    NOTE: For additional information, look for [ActivityId] 3f720ef3-435d-0001-5c47-733f5d43d101 in the Event Log or use
    the command line Get-AppxLog -ActivityID 3f720ef3-435d-0001-5c47-733f5d43d101
    At line:1 char:38
    + … | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register “$($_.I …
    + ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo : NotSpecified: (C:\Program File…ppXManifest.xml:String) [Add-AppxPackage], Exception
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : DeploymentError,Microsoft.Windows.Appx.PackageManager.Commands.AddAppxPackageCommand

    Add-AppxPackage : Deployment failed with HRESULT: 0x80073D02, The package could not be installed because resources it
    modifies are currently in use.
    error 0x80004004: Unable to install because the following apps need to be closed
    Microsoft.Windows.Cortana_cw5n1h2txyewy!CortanaUI.
    NOTE: For additional information, look for [ActivityId] 3f720ef3-435d-0000-7681-733f5d43d101 in the Event Log or use
    the command line Get-AppxLog -ActivityID 3f720ef3-435d-0000-7681-733f5d43d101
    At line:1 char:38
    + … | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register “$($_.I …
    + ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo : NotSpecified: (C:\Windows\Syst…ppXManifest.xml:String) [Add-AppxPackage], Exception
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : DeploymentError,Microsoft.Windows.Appx.PackageManager.Commands.AddAppxPackageCommand

  • I ran this and now I am unable to connect to the internet via ethernet cable or wifi. Does this command do anything with those interfaces?

  • I have tried this several times but it’s not working for me.
    I can afford to be reset my Windows and be reinstalling app like that.
    Microsoft gotta do something about this.

  • This worked for me too! I had upgraded my laptop from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10. Cortana worked just fine from the start. I added a second user account for my Fiancรฉ, and Cortana never worked. No search, no response when clicking the icon for Cortana on the taskbar. I was able to open Control Panel and Search for “Cortana”, which returned something like “Cortana – Search Settings” which did absolutely nothing when clicked, just like the behavior of the search bar and Cortana icon on the Taskbar.

    Thank you very much for the fix!

  • It didn’t work for me and I cannot create another user account.
    I get the error message: Explorer.exe Class not registered …

  • Thank you so much. It worked like a charm.

    As a non geek (I use the term with much respect and admiration) I appreciate you taking the time to help folks like me out. You will probably say that it wasn’t a big deal, but is to folks like me.

    Thanks again

  • We check YouTube videos, and did the PowerShell didn’t work and the sfc / scannow and say : Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations but start menu don’t work I really don’t care for the Cortana but because is in the system is messing up my start menu, please help me to fix it! cause is messing up other programs and I don’t think is fair we have to do a bunch a backups with an error that we didn’t create and because our system keep asking to update and we can’t because this error

  • If the start menu doesn’t work, what good it right-clicking it?? and windows+X doesn’t do anything fr me, either. Microsoft sucks…

  • So I’ve tried doing the copy-paste in powershell (and I did run it as administrator) but it just stays on “processing” for over 15 minutes. Is it supposed to take that long? There’s no progress in the little progress dots.

  • it executed, i opened it as an admin, it said about 50 activities not shown, but it didnt work. i still cant open start menu:(

  • Hey guys , how much do i need to wait ? I got like 60+ activities not shown and it still doesnt work ๐Ÿ™

  • I followed your istruction but now i’ve got some problem, first the app (mail ecc..) crash when i open they, so i reboot system but now there is a black screen with white word that say “Error loading operating system_”
    Please help me

  • It did not work, I copied and pasted, but once I hit the enter button, it says that the command is not recognized.
    besides, when I right clicked on the shell, it did not paste, it opened an list of items to chose from, and one of the items was pate.

  • My Windows is crashing it was all fine.
    Got a msg saying start menu n cortana not working.
    Now it is stucking every now n then
    Plz help!!!!

  • worked GREAT. Just follow instructions
    Main issue is ADMINISTRATOR COMMAND
    PROMPT. USE windows key and X. Press at
    the same time.

  • It worked, but now my utilities aren’t working – the calculator app, etc, are crashing and their icons are all messed up… HELP!

    • Would you try running this again? And let it run for quite sometime until it finishes. If it throws errors, maybe they can give you a clue about what’s wrong.

    • The “refresh your pc” worked for me:

      Refresh your PC

      As a last resort, you can โ€˜refreshโ€™ your Windows 10 installation, which is much the same as reinstalling the operating system. Your documents wonโ€™t be affected, but youโ€™ll need to reinstall any applications that arenโ€™t part of Windows.

      1. Restart Windows in Troubleshooting mode

      Close any open applications and press the [Windows] + [L] keys to log out of your Windows account โ€” or just restart Windows. On the login screen, click the Powericon at the bottom right, hold down the [Shift] key and select the Restart option.

      2. Reset your PC

      When the blue Choose an option screen appears, click Troubleshoot, followed byReset this PC. finally, click the Keep my files option and follow the on-screen instructions.

  • Thanks it worked! I had tried other fixes that didn’t do a thing

    The menu is not look exactly like it was before, but at least I can access the programs that I don’t have a desktop short cut for. and everything else on the task bar now works. I will bookmark this site.

  • Buenas noches, estoy muy indignado. He intentado de todo, busque cientos de tutoriales, realice todos los pasos, ingrese todas las claves en powershell y hasta el momento nada se ha solucionado. Por favor les pido encarecidamente que me ayuden a solucionar este problema, sin tener que recurrir a formatear la notebook ni crear en ultima instancia una cuenta de usuario nueva. Muchas gracias.

    • Good evening, I am very angry . I’ve tried everything , find hundreds of tutorials , perform all the steps , enter all the keys in powershell and so far nothing has been solved. Please strongly encouraged to help me solve this problem without having to resort to format the notebook and ultimately create new user account I ask. Thank you.

      • I get your point, Cristian, but unfortunately Resetting or New User Account would be the only option you’re left with. Some strange things with Windows 10 will never be sorted out.

  • Worked but now many of my apps (e.g., Office 365, Outlook 2016, Fitbit, Quicken, Google Chrome,…) can’t be started from Start. They show up under All Apps list, but can’t be started. These all have a down V or up ^ arrow next to them that alternates between up/down whenever you click on them. Also the icon for each of these is just a “folder” that opens/closes when the app is clicked on. The app can be run if an icon shows on the desktop (e.g., Quicken) but I don’t know how to start others (e.g., Office).

    Any thoughts on how to resolve this issue?

  • Hi all,

    Thanks for the fix.
    During the setup phase of installing W10 it dropped out when establishing an outlook account.

    Saved me a lot of stress as the usual fixes involve access to the menu,

    Cheers, Adam

  • Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register “$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml”}

    this worked for me ..
    thanks

  • Right click on the start button doesn’t do anything either, so this solution doesn’t work for me. My laptop was working fine, then I decided to shut down but nothing happened when I clicked on start. I shut it down by selecting shutdown from the menu I got with ctrl-alt-del. This morning, not only does the start menu still not work, but I’ve lost my apps that were pinned to the task bar. And anything I start from the shortcut on my desktop doesn’t show up on the taskbar as an active task, so if I minimize it then it’s gone.

  • Also, W10 ran perfectly for 3 months before the problem showed up. It appeared after I attempted to make display changes in order to get HDMI port to work….another successful microshit feature…..not that anybody would possibly want to hook a computer to a HDTV.

    • Damn it. It relates so well to my story. I also started experiencing it when I switched from the DVI to HDMI and made the appropriate changes in display settings. I was thinking that I only experienced it now because maybe the PC has not stayed on for this long in the past.
      Microsoft has shown unprofessional behavior with Windows 10. Hopefully they will continue pushing fixes and updates to fix such issues.

  • Ok everyone. My problem is that d start menu worksfine nd everyting but after leaving my computer on for a long time say overnight then d start nd cortana wont work. Was windows 10 set to be like this? should i follow these ibstructions as well?

    • Yes. That’s something I face as well. Long hours of PC ON and sometimes start works, but search doesn’t and at other times both don’t.
      This method will not solve this issue, because it seems like some inherent issue with Windows 10. It starts behaving weird after long hours. This tutorial was only where Start completely stopped working and restart or whatever does not bring it back.

    • I have this problem too and the simple solution (quick fix) is to open the task manager (right click on taskbar) and I restart Windows Explorer. For me this problem start after the big updates I had a couple weeks ago. Before that everything was fine. (By the way it was a fresh windows 10 install not an upgrade)

  • How long is Powershell supposed to take?
    It’s been at it for about 30min and doesn’t seem to be doing anything…

  • Great – at last! (so far) fixed all the problems I have been having since JULY – now have no explorer scrashes and a start menu and a desktop.

  • idiot microsoft..for a normal user like..start menju did not work..I am sure for many people it will not work. why still microsft is not solving the issue.
    i am running the powershell it sloved the issue.

  • This is not a fix but is a work-a-round that worked for me. I finally, after trying all the above with nothing but a different user working (a pain!), installed “Classic Shell” (http://classicshell.net/) and I now have a fully functioning Start menu. I’s just not the Windows 10 start menu.

  • Just want to thank you for this fix. Had this issue just seemingly randomly occur after using Windows 10 for a few months. Solved my issue!

  • I tried to do this, but it tells me the following:
    โ€˜Get-AppXPackageโ€™ is not recognized as an internal or external command,
    operable program or batch file.

    And yes, I was running Command prompt (Admin)
    Directory
    C:\WINDOWS\system32>

  • I tried to do this, but it tells me the following:
    ‘Get-AppXPackage’ is not recognized as an internal or external command

    And yes, I was running Command prompt (Admin)
    Directory
    C:\WINDOWS\system32>

  • Hey guys,

    I ran the command stated above. How long do I have to wait for it to finish? Running only a 3Mbps connection at home. Thanks in advance!

  • Perfectamundo!I ran power shell as administrator and pasted that “Get AppsX pkg” like you said above, hit enter, waited for it to process, then I ignored the few red comments at the end. Hit start menu window, it came right up…moved over to action center, clicked that and it came right up….You, Narender are a life saver!! Thanks!!!

    • Equally happy that it has helped you get out of the issue. I’m just disappointed with Microsoft that their OS crashes one of its key component so often. Never happened to me in earlier versions of Windows.

  • It worked!!! Searched around and didn’t have any success with other options. Just bookmarked your site in case i have other issues with Windows 10.

  • Follow following steps :

    1. Go to run (Windows + r)
    2. type regedit and press enter.
    3. click ok when notification window prompt.
    4. Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER>Software>Microsoft>Windows>CurrentVersion>Explorer>Advance
    5. Create a Dword with name โ€˜EnableXamlStartMenuโ€™.
    6. Give it value 0
    7. Log off and login again.
    Your start menu should work now.

    • Hi there,

      Should I delete the entry named “EnableStartMenu” after having creating the “EnableXamStartMenu” ?
      Another question : If I have a 64bit windows, shouldn’t I create a QWORD instead of QWORD ?

      I’m asking these questions after having followed your instructions ๐Ÿ™

      Many thanx for helping me out.

      Anthony

  • I recommend to all of those who suffered with this prob to use tweaking windows repair tool. It Fixed my problem and it will repair yours(100% sure).

      • The Get-AppXPackage unfortunately didn’t work for me. However I created another user account and the Start Menu work under that. The only problem is I don’t know how to transfer files and Apps from the old user account that doesn’t work to the new one – Can you advise ?

        • Store apps you need to install again. Desktop softwares which are installed for multiple users will be available within start or via program Files.
          You can transfer other files and folders using cut and paste.

  • I found another fix for this that was much simpler. I’d recommend people try this if they have any other issues, or want to try a simpler fix first.

    CTRL+SHIFT+ESC to open task manager. Kill process “Desktop Window Manager”

    This fixed it for me.

    • Thanks for this, but I believe this won’t work for everyone. In your case, even a system restart would’ve worked.

  • I had the same problem. I had upgraded from Win 7 and had been working well for months and just recently after some updates noticed the start button no longer worked, and I had the calculator pinned to the task bar and it wouldn’t open. All else worked okay. I used the powershell command supplied above, and am now working 100%. Thanks.

  • Great job. I have been searching for an answer to this problem for about 2 weeks. The Powershell command worked as promised. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

  • I tried Powershell as mentioned by typing:

    Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register “$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml”}

    Successfully worked! Many thanks!

  • It might be a update need to be installed If you selected notify me to install updates in the settings then its easy just sign out now in the critical error dialogue Box. Then click restart in the lock screen of windows 10 and that’s it the start menu and cortana will work fine…

  • Friend.. I update.. Windows 10.. Was windows 8. And on windows 10. All installed.but… Not show me desktop.. When I …will on.. Pc.. Shows me only black screen what I can do-? Not shows me nothing

  • Hi there. This worked for me about 10 days ago, for which many thanks. However, I have just had to run it again. Any idea why the fix is not permanent?
    Best wishes,
    Phil

    • Probably a program installed on your system is conflicting and causing it. Avast and CCleaner are two known culprits.

      • Thanks Narender.
        I do have CCleaner on my PC and have run it recently. Is there a setting I can change in it or should I not use it?
        I have the same on my laptop but have not had any problems.
        Best wishes,
        Phil

        • I’m unsure. I only know that it has caused trouble to many out here. So many reported that this regular issue stopped appearing after removing CCleaner. I don’t know what all it does, because I don’t use it myself.
          What I feel is that it is deleting some files which it feels are junk, but actually important configuration files for the Start Menu.

  • Every time I right click on the start menu and select Command Prompt (admin) it say that I need to buy express zip because my 14 day trial is up, what is going on?

  • ‘Get-AppXPackage’ is not recognized as an internal or external command,
    operable program or batch file. This is the error i’m getting kindly tell me what has to be done

    • That’s because you did not follow the steps properly. You need to run it in Powershell and not command prompt ๐Ÿ˜›

  • Still unable to work in private domain with Start Menu & Cortana and Taskbar Search but able to work with local Admin. Please Help!

  • I had to hit about 4 times!!! some come back some not, like my Twitter, News, Weather and few more. But if you find the new way let me know . I will still try.

  • YAY it worked!!!!! i was so frustrated so my last resort was to ask google. this was the first link and I’m so glad it didn’t give me a virus or anything

  • Solution Windows 10 Build 10565:

    Move English (United States) up on top , in Windows display language.

    When fixed, move native languge up on top again.

    • This fix did not work for me, neither did creating a new profile. Not only that when I shut down my computer I rebooted the next day and I could not access either profile and the computer went through a crazy automatic fix, diagnosing pc loop that went on for hours. I could not restart, reboot, could not do system restore, could not roll back to a previous version. My only fix in the end was to reset the computer to factory settings which removed Win 10 and rolled me back to Win 8.1 – disappointed is an understatement.

      • Nothing more than a conflicting app which removes or alters some key entries and hence breaks it. Avast Antivirus and CCleaner are two known utilities to cause this.

        • This seems to be my problem. The above recommendation did not work and now I cannot access Microsoft OneDrive after I ran the powershell app reinstall. Do you have any recommendations?

        • I have both Avast and CCleaner; is there a way to figure out which one is causing the start menu and Cortana to stop working? And if there is, is there a way to get it to quit making it do that?

          • I’m not sure about that because some users said removing avast from the system worked, others that removing CCleaner worked. You have both of them and both are known to cause conflicts. Maybe you can switch to alternative programs for both.
            If Avast includes some Cleanup function that removes registry clutter and all, its the one causing it. Same for Ccleaner.

    • It seems to have worked now to try my laptop as both the Start Menus stopped at the same time. Don’t know how as everyone else didn’t have the same problems when they logged on.

  • It’s not working for me tho.. :/

    “Deployment operation in progress…” in Powershell..

    It’s been an hour already and progressbar is not moving..

      • Yeah.. after quitting and redoing there is just “Initializing…”
        After PC restart still the same song…

        Also I wasn’t able to create a new user.. (It just froze).

        But never mind… I saw you said here that Avast may cause the problem.. so I uninstalled my Avast and it suddenly started to work.. What a crap..

        Thanks BTW!

        • Ah! Glad that it is somehow fixed. Long since Avast is causing issues and they still haven’t managed to fix it.
          Enjoy, buddy ๐Ÿ™‚

  • Thanks for your assistance, the search box in my start menu was unresponsive, after applying your fix it has come to life and all seems to be as it should.

    Thanks again.

    Jon.

  • Thanks a lot for this post, just installed the free upgrade this was really annoying me haha. I really appreciate it.

  • Sadly, this did not work for me… I’m not sure what’s going on. My NVIDIA graphics card keeps crashing as well. I can’t even open my GeForce Experience program.

    • Solution just re-installed all the modern apps which play a role in the start menu. The issue is caused by some incompatible program on your computer (known ones are Avast, CCcleaner; but there will be others) or a System Restore.

  • This worked!! Thanks so much. I have been trying for 3 days and was just about to uninstall software to reimage the computer. Saved me the hassle and time.

  • Hi it worked for me too ! Thanks, the other apps were also not working like Microsoft EDGE and PHOTOs application etc. Now I hope they work. Still windows need to work on this and fix it!

  • thank you so much, tried to find a solution everywhere. was highly considering downgrading because of the lack of a search feature that was working, now it works!

  • Thank you Thank you! I have been googling the heck! outta this problem and finally found this! It worked! Been struggling with dealing with right clicking and finding programs and files the hard way for a month now! Again, can’t thank you enough!!!!

  • OMGOMG!!! This solution WORKED!! Thank you so much! I’ve been trying things that didn’t work for days. You rock!

    Thanks again

    -Dave

  • […] – YOMON8.NET ใƒปFix: Start Menu & Cortana not Opening in Windows 10 ๏ผ‘ใค็›ฎใฎใ‚ตใ‚คใƒˆใงไปŠๅ›žใฎ่งฃๆฑบๆ–นๆณ•ใฎใƒ’ใƒณใƒˆใ‚’ๅพ—ใพใ—ใŸใ€‚ […]

    • This fix worked for me but as soon as I shut down it is back to the same problem again. The fix works again and again but still when I shut down I’m back to the same problem again. I wish I’d never upgraded because now it is past the easy “go back” to W7 and I am going to have to reinstall many things……..any other ideas?

      • There’s something that is causing it to return back. Do you have some sort of Registry Cleaner installed? Or an incompatible AntiVirus?
        Go through your list of AutoStart programs (Task manager> Startup) and disable the ones you do not need.

        • I removed McAfee and AOL computer checkup before my last comment but I will go back and check my startup as you suggested and hopefully find the culprit. It is also keeping my updates from downloading and installing.

  • This worked perfectly! Thanks for posting it…I was at my wits end trying to figure out why right-clicking did not work, Microsoft Edge would not open, and the Start button did nothing.

  • This is the 3rd time, my start menu, has broken! My son fixed it, but now is not in town. I’m unable to right click! How do I get to power shell admin? I read that avast, my virus protection, maybe why this keeps happening. So, please help me get to power she’ll admin!! Thanks..

  • Worked for me. Thanks a ton. This issue was troubling me since morning. Guess Windows 10 isn’t that great as it was promised to be!

  • Not sure why it worked but following the advise of someone with the same problem, I restarted and kept hitting the F8 button. The safe mode did not open but when it finally restarted all issues were fixed

  • Here’s a fix that worked for me:

    Go to C: \ Users \ [your user name] \ AppData \ Local \ TileDataLayer \ and remove anything starting with EDB and ending in .log. In my case, the start menu popped up on it’s own after I moved the files and everything was fine after that.

  • Just ran it on my laptop, but now my start button and my Windows key don’t work at all. Did a System Restore to last week, now I’m back to the error. Not sure what’s next.

  • Whoo-hoo!!! Thank you, thank you, thank you! Worked like a charm and is something I never would have figured out.

  • After 3 days, this was the one that finely worked for me. Bookmarking this page because I’m not confident that this won’t happen again. Thanks!

  • Tried everything, was close to giving up, then I found this solution. Thank you very much IT WORKED (sorry for yelling).

    • haha! You’re very much welcome, buddy ๐Ÿ™‚ Take care and in case it happens again, try finding out a background application that is causing it.

  • temporarily disabling ‘AMD external events utility’ from the task manager worked for me,when everything else failed

  • Did not work for me!

    But I found out how to repair it:
    1. Create new user
    1. Zip folder C: \ Users \ [New User] \ AppData \ Local \ TileDataLayer \ Database
    1. Move zip to C: \ Users \ [User with broken Start Menu] \ AppData \ Local \ TileDataLayer \
    1. Unpack.

    I hope this helps someone. ๐Ÿ™‚

    • This worked for me when nothing else would, thanks! I couldn’t add a new user via the control panel, so I had to hit Windows+R and type lusrmgr.msc in the prompt to get to the user manager. Then I could just right click and add one. You *NEED* to log into that user before the folder will show up. Try and copy over the broken files when you are not logged into the broken account, otherwise files will be in use.

  • None of these solutions worked for me because when windows starts it immediately pops up the critical error stsrt menu not working et all.which prevents from doing anything but a shutdown . Would appreciate any suggestions, I’d like to get it running 9ne more time so I can back everything and then format the drive and start with a virgin install.

    • That would happen to me as well so I shut it down completely and restarted. As soon as the computer loaded I right clicked on the start, it took a second but the command prompt came up.

  • For someone with limited computer experience like me I was seriously doubting my decision to install. Thank heavens for my tablet to seek solutions. Its only day two. I was told I was going to LOVE Windows 10 I guess it’s the feeling has got to grow! I have much to learn! Anyhow thanks for posting the solution

  • Thank you for providing this fix. It worked for me, and I am very pleased that I am able to avoid deleting my user account or resetting my computer. Thanks!

  • hello if the start button doesn’t work how are you suppose to right click and start an admin powershell lol? Left click right click nothing happens with the start button think about it first before you post again. If you can’t run it as an admin it won’t work.

  • Great Job worked for me perfectly. Had my electricity gone out and after starting faced this issue. Now everything is okay. ๐Ÿ™‚

  • Great!
    Had this problem for one of three user accounts, and running this fix solved it.
    Just has to be logged in as the user who has got the problem … which I wasn’t at first.

  • I did the second option to get the start menu you back and I downloaded it and soon after that my WiFi was disabled and I can’t re-enable it and now I’m trying to do a wired connection but all it says is unidentified network

  • I cant right-click on my start button cause its not working lol, when i put my mouse over it, there that blue loading thingy
    What do i do??

  • Unfortunately, I’m one of those for whom the Powershell fix doesn’t work. My install is so corrupted when I try clicking “Add a new user in PC settings”, Windows 10 doesn’t respond.

    I’m trying to restore my system back to Windows 7 because right now mission critical programs are dead in the water. Anything you can point me to in order to accomplish it ??

    • By the way, if it helps anyone, you can always install “Classic Shell” (google it) so you can access your programs easily without the original start menu, it wont help with the lack of notification area.

  • thank you very much my friend you are the best computer genious my start page menu is ok now after I did what you told me thank’s again

  • Ran it first with just the wdw+R command. lost of red reports, but it didn’t work. Then realized you instructed to run Command Prompt- Admin. So ran the script again. This ime the DOS prompt returned this message:

    “Get-AppXPackage’ is not recognized as an internal or external command,
    operable program or batch file.”

    And, of course it didn’t fix it. Any other thoughts?

    • I’m such a dufus. When I realized I needed to run it out of Command prompt-Admin, I forgot to run “Powershell” first, then the script. Duh!!! When I ran the script AFTER running Powershell, in the DOS cmd shell, it did it’s thing and YOU FIXED the problem. You’re genius!!!!!!!!! Thanks so much. The Start menu is back (although I work from the good old desktop 99% of the time.)

        • Thanks so much for the script.
          I did it. I still could not run my start menu, but I can do access to all my works/programs.
          I have not accessed to some programs before, such as m edge, ‘windows button +P ‘.

          • Ah.. I’m sorry it didn’t fix it all for you. You can try creating a new user account and hopefully start menu will work fine under it.

            • Thanks for the fast reply. I did it but I prefer using the current account. If I used the new account I could not show my ENdNote menu in the Office Word Menu. I tried using -add in- in the word option but did not work.
              Thanks again.

    • see, had the same problem initially, especially the red codes and all. just download and install classic shell installer.. press your windows button with the x button in unison… choose the admin CMD run the above code again… worked for me… don’t know how long it lasts .. but its okay…

  • The taskbar was completely frozen for me, so I had to run powershell from the Task Manager by opening a new task and typing ‘powershell.exe’

  • None of these suggestions fixed my start menu. I was able to resolve the issue when I looked at the errors in the event log. I needed to stop the WSearch service and delete a corrupted file (listed in the error log) for me: C:\Users\\AppData\Local\TileDataLayer\Database\EDB00009.log. The service automatically restarted, and the start menu works again :).

    I found the solution here: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/esent-errors/bef892b3-85d4-42d7-ad21-514a1652cd0a

  • It didnt work for me, I have tried it 5 times now, I have even tried a complete system restore saving files but that even ran into an error and halted mid restore saying I have a corupted file or drive…. it was working perfect not more than 6 hours prior to the issue when I turned my system off to head out to the store. when I turned it on nothing but issues. no recent downloads, no uninstalled files. literally nothing has changed as far as storage is concerned in the past month can you email me if you have any thoughts or ideas?

  • Nope, I have tried everything now, its the second time it has done this, last time i reset my computer back to factory settings.. HELP PLEASE

  • Didn’t work for me.
    Only simple solution was to go back to Microsoft windows 10 download site.
    Re-download and Re-install windows 10.
    Didn’t loose any of my re-installed programs and settings, and my start menu + Cortana are now fully working! ๐Ÿ™‚

  • I had lost on windows 10 my start up menu and apps, I tried a number of repeated suggestions, I even reinstalled win 10 leaving existing programmes/files on my PC with no success, may have to do a complete reinstall of win 10 was working fine a couple of days ago, all of a sudden had issues, I had not installed any new programmes or apps.

    • yeah, unfortunatley, this is something people who also had windows 8 or 8.1 had to do sometimes.

      try a new user, if it works move your stuff over and youll be back in biz (usually works)

      if not, backup your gear and use the reset pc without saving files (but only as a last resort)

      hope this helps

      also, mr singh

      mind if i nick the script for integrating into one i have? (just for my use as a it geezer)

      i have a cmd style script for disabling all windows tracking, and wanted to combine it all for people who need thier windows fixed.

    • There is no link to command prompt. You need to open it in your PC by following the steps mentioned. In the post, links with dotted underlines are the advertisements.

  • i am on windows 10 10547 and this fix saved my work after cortana ,modern apps and start had stopped working.thx man ur great!!

  • Cmd said: ‘Get-Appxpackage’ is not recognized as an internal or external comand, operable program or batch file. ….. Doesn’t work.

  • Nice! You the man, Narender. I suppose it took roughly 5 minutes to run through all the prompts, but worked PERFECTLY.

    Bravo, Sir.

  • it doesnot work.. the black window called “Administrator: Windows PowerShell” and still no luck.. any other help beside cangeing user account.??

  • Thank you so much. This worked for me. I am assuming that the next update will correct this and hopefully, the read/write issue with folders….

  • This stuff didn’t work for me but logging on as a different user (had to creat an admin user under computer management) and deleting my user profile under computer > properties > advanced worked for me

  • Didn’t work for me ๐Ÿ™ I guess I will just put up with not having the tiles. Which sucks because it’s part of why I wanted this laptop.

  • This fix worked great until I turned my laptop on the next morning. I had the same problem as before. No start button, no apps, no edge and no Cortana. And the fix that worked yesterday no longer works.

  • Had the same problem, people kept saying that Avast was causing issues, really, but guess what, in my case, I uninstalled Avast replaced it with Bitdeffender, presto all my problems gone.

  • wow, this worked really well.

    Took under a minute….what does it actually do though? Just restart the services I presume?

  • Great. So after all the complaining people did about how WIndows 8 removed the Start button, they finally add the Start button. BUT NOW IT DOESN’T FREAKING WORK.

  • This worked for me on the first try. It took less than 10 minutes to run. Start Menu came up again. Hope it stays after a reboot. But this got me further than all the other suggestions offered in good faith on Microsoft’s Community Forum. Thanks again.

  • Can’t right click a start menu that won’t operate. Nothing works. Can’t get online and won’t even read my dvd rom. So at this point I can’t even get my old version of Windows back. Thanks Microsoft for once again forcing me to spend money I don’t have. Thanks for wrecking my laptop and making me loose all my stuff. Never again will I get a pc. I’m switching to Mac.

    • Exactly, this is definitely frustrating! I have no clue how to fix this, as I do not have the money to correct this issue. I wish I would have kept ignoring that upgrade pop up.

    • Does not work. Not sure why so many says it has. If the start menu is not working, which means the computer can’t communicate with it right clicking won’t work. Any time I right click I get the same pop up I get when I left click. Critical Error. Start menu and Cortana have stopped working. We will try to fix this the next time you sign in. Unless there is a back door to get into your Start Menu without using quick keys or ctrl esc there is nothing to do but reinstall your old windows loosing anything that was not backed up before the upgrade.

      • What is happening with you is very rare. For the most (who are saying it works), the start menu doesn’t just open on click. No critical error and hence a right click works fine.
        Did you try opening the Powershell (after CMD) by making use of the Task manager?

        • I just opened my laptop to do just that and Microsoft in all their wisdom finally decided to do an update fixing the problem, for now at least. Still going to switch to Mac. Ive had enough with Microsoft and their windows BS. Thanks for the interest and taking the time to reply.

          • That’s a personal decision, but you’re surely going to miss the vast selection of applications and softwares that Windows offers you. BTW, glad that you finally have your start menu working ๐Ÿ™‚

  • It worked for me but required 3 tries. First try- I left it running for over 8 hours, nothing happened. Second try – nothing happened so I closed the program after 15 minutes. Third try – after a reboot, I tried again, the command ran for about 10 minutes and finished. The start button works again, thanks.

  • open command prompt (Admin). this i cannot do. in fact i cant get win 10 to do anything at all. i cant even open up the file explorer. i have a few buttons on my task bar that work but nothing else does. its looking like i will have to by a new computer to escape from win 10. life sucks.

  • Starter menu has stopped working for sometime now, Also the Microsoft New browser Microsoft edge is not functioning.. I have had three Microsoft tech support to check the problem but they have not ben able to repair them. Help please my computer is now useless with these errors of Microsoft, I cannot access any of my work.

  • The error showed yesterday after Windows 10 worked without problems for two weeks following the update. The fix didn’t correct the error though, the only effect eems to be that the “fatal error” message doesn’t show anymore. The start menu remains dead.

  • Thank you.
    Start button came to be usable by your solution.
    But store – icon becomes effective temporarily, but becomes ineffective when I log on again.
    Is this a problem only for my PC?

  • My whole desktop, not even fully loaded just keeps flashing and never stops. I can not get into anything but the task manager. I tried the above but did not work. I use this laptop for work and need it working. Really wish they would have put a warning out, I would have never even tried the upgrade. If I can’t get this working soon I will have to do a system reboot. And will loose lots of info.

  • Wow! As much as I am a technical lay-person when it comes to anything that vaguely resembles the resolution of programming issues, your steps were extremely clear and easy to follow. Bottom line: success in repairing the issue of my disappeared Windows 10 Start Menu. Thanks large, Doc!!

  • Had same problem, was not able to run this the first time, did a system restore and then was able to run this. All came back, wished I had tried this before recreating a new user which did not work nor solve the problem, took approx. 10 min.

    Thanks for the great advise!

  • Thank you so much. It begs the question if this was found in the evaluation product why was it not fixed in the full release? Oh yes, its microsoft.

  • merci beaucoup pour l’information; J’ai rรฉsolu mon problรจme de bouton dรฉmarrer windows 10 et en mรชme temps celui de edge qui ne dรฉmarrait plus non-plus.

    Fรฉlicitation pour vos connaissances

  • I canot even Right Click on the Start it just does not open the command or anything. So, the solution is useless to me. Anyone figured a way to open the Command Shell thru different way?

      • You can open the Task Manager by pressing Ctrl-Shift-Esc at the same time. The File menu of the Task Manager has an option for Run New Task. You can use this to bring up a command prompt by typing “Cmd” in the box (make sure to check the box for “Create this task with administrative privileges”).

        Note: Windows+R also gives you the run command but doesn’t have the option for administrative privileges.

    • Hit Win+X It Will Help
      Or Else Open Task Manager -> File -> Run New Task and Check on Run with admin priveleges
      Hope it Helps

  • I have to do this fix every single day, Is there a permanent fix for this, Its really getting on my last nerve.

    Every time I put in this and let it run, it tells me 43 windows apps are not showing.

  • “Deployment operation progress” had been sitting on what appears to be able 30% for an hour and a half now. Be nice if it have a little more feedback on what it’s doing, if in fact it’s doing anything at all.

    This is the second time Windows 10 has done this on me. Last time I did a fresh reinstall. Hoping to avoid that this time around.

    Microsoft need to get their act together as this release version doesn’t feel roadworthy yet.

  • How do I know when this process has finished, I am trying to recover my lost Start Button.

    Will it say end or finished ?

  • My start menu was working about 50% of the time and was getting quite annoying. The fix took about 10 seconds to complete and fixed my problem instantaneously! Thanks!

  • Hello, I have tried this solution and I have no luck even when leaving it on for countless hours. I have tried to make a new user account and it will not let me create a new one. If anyone has a solution for me please help, thank you.

  • When i first try it doesn’t work, i search the problem and its say Windows Firewall not Started so when i get to Control Panel and search then i try to enable it doesn’t work then try to get to Services and i found it Windows Firewall its disabled so i enabled it and i try the command again it worked great. NOW MY PC IS BACK TO NORMAL THANKS YOU!!

  • Thanks for this, I followed these few little steps, didn’t even have to reboot, everything looks normal again!

  • actually it seems that after you restart your pc your back to square one with start menu and everything not working…

  • After executing above command through powershell(admin mode) it worked very well as I comment before but I got another issues now my desktop is refreshing continuously if i click on start menu icon.

    I stopped refreshing desktop through task manager, by end task processor using higher percentage of CPU but once I click on start menu, whole refreshing thing starts.

    Anyone having same issue?

  • Thank you, this was driving me nuts as the other user accounts on the machine were ok, not sure what that command meant but it worked!

    • It simply re-installs all the modern apps (which is pretty much everything that Windows 10 brings over Windows 7 or 8).

  • Resolved my issue. Note that after the Powershell command finished and I clicked on the Start button to test, there was a 5-10 second delay before my Start menu reappeared. This fix also brought back my missing JumpLists from Word, Excel, etc that were pinned to the taskbar. Sweet!

  • TY TY TY TY TY TY TY. This is the first fix that has actually worked for me. For once I will not have to suffer through endless pages and tiresome fixes just to be disappointed time and time again. Very clear instructions and worked first time. ๐Ÿ™‚

  • Move your mouse pointer to the start menu. Click the right mouse button and move your mouse pointer to SHUT DOWN or SIGN IN and select. the menu will expand, where you will see option to sign out, sleep, shut down and restart. Press the left shift key down and select restart while keep holding the shift key. Keep holding down the shift key until a menu appears on the screen and select the first option. Continue booting, this fixes the start button and cortana problems

    Microsoft are aware of this problem but here is a workaround
    Reboot holding down the shift key and keep it pressed until a menu appears on the screen
    select the first option Continue booting, this fixes the start button and cortana problems as well as the known auto refresh options occasionally not working

    • I did exactly what you said and still my menu’s Will not open, Can you help me at all? I click on the start button and nothing happens, Then the same with Cortana, I click on her and nothings happens and its really irritating me please help.

  • I tried the option with the powershell but than it says that he could find “AppXManifest.xml” or it was written wrong

    anyone with an idea? please

    • TRY THIS EVERYBODY WORK LIKE CHAMP….. CAN’T REMEMBER THE SITE I GOT THIS FROM, COMMENT…. if its work for you as well…

      Microsoft are aware of this problem but here is a workaround
      Reboot holding down the shift key and keep it pressed until a menu appears on the screen
      select the first option Continue booting, this fixes the start button and cortana problems as well as the known auto refresh options occasionally not working.

  • Thanks, this solution works fine, but, for me, only in the current windows session. Every time I restart my pc, the problem returns

  • I ran the whole process and it finished normally. But now when I click on the start menu, it does nothing. Before It forced a shut down. Do I need to restore ? How do I shut down now ?

  • Thanks Narender, I tried running the command you suggested in Administrator Powershell … unfortunately it didn’t work for me. The system also does not allow me to add a new user, even although my account has admin rights. Any other suggestions would be appreciated! I may have to go back to Windows 8.1 … somehow?

  • After run mentioned command in cmd ,the error is ‘Get-AppXPackage command is not recognized’…so now what to do?..can u suggest me?

    • You need to run that in Powershell. It appears that you didn’t convert the normal Command Prompt window to Powershell.

  • Thanks yoiu so much – I have been trying everything I could think of and Edge, Start-menu and most other Microsoft Embedded Apps would not run. Steps 1-4 worked for me! Thanks again for posting this solution!
    Bob

  • Creating a new user worked for me but unfortunately when you want to create a new user you need access to “add new user” in Settings. Most of the time Setting wil also not work.
    So you will need to use the command line to add a user (your user account needs to have admin privileges or it won’t work).
    – Press CTRL SHIFT ESC to open Task Manager
    – press File – Create New Task
    – make sure to enable “Create this task with administrative privileges”
    – To add a new user account with the login id John and with password PAss12345 enter
    net user John PAss12345 /ADD
    – Restart and try to logon with new user
    – For me this didn’t work and user logged out right after logging in
    – try now to login with your username

    For me this worked so hopefully for you to…

  • Follow the instructions closely worked great including resolving issue with edge closing as soon as it starts…Thanks!

  • Thanks. This is helpful and fixes it but every time I start up my laptop I have to do it again. Any idea why?

    • Kindly check for the programs that autostart every time you turn on the PC. One of the conflicting programs might be booting up each time.

  • Thank you! Having Classic Shell installed in Windows 8 broke the start menu in Windows 10. Running this command fixed it.

  • windows 10 upgrade is shit
    there support is shit
    Advice you guys dont upgrade it
    Either get cracked copy and install from scratch or stick to your old OS

  • Open Windows PowerShell as Administrator
    Right click Start button
    Choose Command prompt (Admin)
    Key in Powershell in the black window and hit Enter
    Paste the following command in the Administrator: Windows PowerShell window and press Enter key:
    Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register “$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml”}

    but it’s not working a message has come in Command Prompt:-

    ‘Get-AppXPackage’ is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.

  • I started running the powershell and then closed it after 5 mins. I did not think it was working. After I restarted my computer all of my applications are gone……any ideas on this?

  • it did not work for me it writes _ is not recognized as an internal or external comand, operable program or batch file

    • You need to run that in Powershell and not command prompt. Did you convert the CMD window into powershell by typing Powershell and pressing the Enter key?

  • Wow!! This really worked I was searching google and read some articles and other forums regarding this issue with windows 10 start menu and taskbar icons and programs not responding and I followed your simple instructions { by Narender Singh }
    and whala!! Very easy and my menu started no problem and the bottom right-side corner icons also responded. I am now a official happy camper Thank you.

  • In advance, sorry for my english mistakes because i’m portuguese, but i will try to explain myself. My start menu is working fine besides setting, that woun’t open. Can someone explain me how to fix this?

  • I finally figured out that Avast (an excellent choice for anitivirus, btw) has a program called Cleanup. I was running it on a scheduled basis – and the following day – lost “Start” and a number of other apps. I disabled the program, and now I no longer have to run the patch above – which works very well also.

  • it did not work for me. It made to disappear all the apps like windows store and ms edge. I can’t even locate them ๐Ÿ™

  • Thanks so much it worked. I have had so many problems with window 10.And now I am back to normal nearly.
    Thank You so much ๐Ÿ™‚

  • So My win 10 started working when i launched it in safe mode and after that I launched it again normally and it started working.
    This is how to launch it in safe mode:
    I made an empty file and opened the cmd? from the left upper corner as adminstrator and typed in msconfig.
    Go to the launch option and mark the launch in safe mode and apply.
    Restart in safe mode and restart your computer normally after it has loaded.

  • I have no idea, how Microsoft can sell windows 8 and then offer a free upgrade to a product [windows 10], which has such a basic floor. 75% of the population know less than I do about computers and software. So how are they dealing with being shut out of their computer. After 20 years of supporting the PC and Microsoft products I thing that I will just go buy a MAC.

    • Majority don’t have a choice, right? Golden time for PC repair stations because they’re the one to benefit from this. MAC does seem like a choice, but because a lot of software don’t work there and because it is a lot expensive than a basic PC that you can buy, I don’t think MAC is a good Windows substitute. Probably people should try Linux and with more users, it might grow the community and software support ๐Ÿ™‚

  • When it says “Initialized” at the bottom is it still working or what? because it has been like that for awhile. Is it safe to exit it and restart my computer or keep waiting?

  • Hi, if anybody can help me with my problem. I updated my computer to W10 and it worked well for the first 20 minutes then it asked me to restart the system. Since then I can’t start windows, I see the first window and someimtimes sounds the windows initiating system but the screen is always black. So, I would like either to reinstall windows 7 or fix this problem. I already ran the computer with the safe mode but couldn’t do anything else to fix the problem. Thank you for the help.

  • It worked but when I restarted the PC, it again stopped showing my Start Menu. It means whenever I restart my PC, I have to run this powershell script again.

    Its a temporary solution not permanent.

    Please suggest any permanent solution

    • The issue is that the cause of the issue (some program) is still on your PC and it causes it to go defunct every time you shut down the PC.

  • Hello !
    I had high expectation from Windows 10 , even after 2 quick updates , a simple essential START menu is not taken care of ? ,is something beyond me .
    Than how can you go forward in Windows 10. I am switching back to my Windows 7′

  • Same thing is happening to me, the powershell command does nothing.
    Just after making a post on G+ about how MS is killing the info on updates I came upstairs to find my PC with a black screen, unresponsive so I had to hard reset it and sure enough it finished Windows updates only to reboot while it was finishing up.
    Now my Note, One Drive, etc keep crashing and I have a dead Start and Notification menu.
    I said no more to this “ad based OS” and went to do a roll back and well…I cannot do that because in MS’s infinite wisdom they allowed their media creation tool to overwrite your much needed BT & WS folders thus eliminating the ability to revert…bravo MS!
    I loathe where MS is going now and want nothing to do with 10 anymore.

    Actually…the only thing that works with a left click on my task bar is task view and show hidden icons.
    Start, search, networks, volume, and notifications are unresponsive however I can right click on them.
    When I try to do a refresh and keep my files it tells me everything needs to be reinstalled so what is the point.
    I cannot create a new account either as those choices do nothing when I click on them, the OS is totally borked.

  • I tried it, Start menu and notification bar is opened. but I can’t open the folders in start menu. Cannot search for apps. :/ :disappointed:

  • the 1st method worked for me but on a second run. so i did 2 runs back to back and had no errors and ever thing was fine….ty ๐Ÿ™‚

  • My brightness as well as my start button isn’t working??? I’ve tried the first option but she’ll is taking too long to execute.

  • This solution works like a charm but in order to get it working your windows should be activated.

    Thanks ๐Ÿ˜€

    • Great
      I already face the same problem with Windows 8.1and did not found the real solution except creating a new account
      With Windows 10, I was still surprise ta face the same problem again and found your solution
      It works perfectly
      PowerShell runs a few minutes and the problem was corrected
      I found back the Windows Button, Start Button, Cortana, Edge, and so on
      Thank you so much

  • Thank you SO MUCH, Narender!!! Your solution brought my start menu, Edge, and Cortana back to life. You rock!

  • I had the same problem yesterday after Windows update KB3081444, after uninstalling this update I was able to use the start button, access the clock and calendar, also Cortina loaded my search engine as normal. All back to normal now.

  • Nope, can’t even right click the start button. I can right click the search button, but that does me no good. Pretty sure this system sucks. The ONLY positive feature I have noticed is my computer automatically connects to my WIFI when I open it. That was a problem I always used to have.

  • Evevry App that came with win10 are nowhere to found after i did what you’ve posted. i tried system restore. it fixed my Start menu and search problem but my app won’t come back

  • This fix worked after I had replaced a motherboard on an OEM system just after installing Windows 10, then having to roll back to Windows 7 OEM to reactivate then reinstall Windows 10 again.

  • have the same problem. yes it works but only for the current session. Have to repeat on every boot up. Any ideas ???

    • Some program on your PC is causing it to go malfunctioning again. Maybe you need to do some hit and trial to find out such program.

  • I gave up on Windows Hated and moved to Linux. I came back to Windows for Windows 10, and I have to say, Linux never fails to start, it never crashes, and I never had to spend an evening recovering it.

  • so far, I had to use this fix twice the day I installed 10, and every time I updated since. When I do I also lose all the favorite places I save on edge. Is this ever going to be fixed???? I’m happy that it works and I really like 10 but I don’t think I should have to run this fix every time microsoft updates.

    • Didn’t work for me either. See about post about making it worse. Funny thing is that last night (for some unknown reason) the start, search and notification buttons worked but after shutting down last night and restarting this morning they stopped working again. Also….anyone notice that their Microsoft Edge is gone and nowhere to be found.

  • I open the Command Prompt as an Administrator, however, I never open “Windows PowerShell”. Anyway, the thing is that when I paste the command into the Prompt, it tells me:
    ” ‘Get-AppPackage’ is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.

    Perhaps this is not the window I should be typing the command in? I followed the steps as I should ๐Ÿ˜ฎ

    • Same for me! and when I try to run the powershell command, it takes forever to execute… is it supposed to take a long time?

    • Didn’t work for me, either. Actually made it worse. Before when I left clicked on the start button a “critical error” message came up. Down the start button is just dead (except the right click button)

  • So i used this “Fix” nothing changed, unistalled avast and ccleaner also no change, tried sfc/scannow also same old story.
    Tried to add new account but when i press add or use microsoft account to sing in, nothing happens.

    Thx for the help tho…

    It’s a shame it didn’t work.

  • It deleted a few icons from my task bar (all the Win 10 programs I put there). When I click on Start or the Action Center I do get an hourglass, which is more than I got before. Even after rebooting still no luck.

    Thanks for trying to help though. It is greatly appreciated.

    I think I will sign in using a different MS email acct like you suggested. Anything is worth a try. I just wonder why MS has not addressed the issue yet?

  • After changing login from local account to Microsoft account my Start button stopped working. This solved the problem immediately.

  • Tried it twice, did not work. Its not just the start menu, it is also the action center and search screens that are not working., this is on my desktop , however my laptop is working fine using same Microsoft account on both.
    I tried setting up a test account on my PC and all worked well but that is not the point. I will lose all my other data, historic email, calendars etc if I just open a new account profile.

  • my pc has the same critical error of start up menu and cortana not working,.i tried with uninstallng avast bt now the operating system is not working at all...i cant use my pc...how can I solve this .. says:

    save my pc out of this start up and cortana..i have uninstall avast bt my operating system is not workng

  • It worked. Thank you very much

    May I know the possible cause of the start menu not working? It also affected the Notifications and the Volume buttons?

  • My Start menu stopped working about a week ago. We contacted Microsoft, spent many hours on the phone with tech support, finally ended up creating a new account and transferring all the files. Now, it’s not working in the new account either. I tried running this fix, and it’s still not working. What else can I try?

  • Uninstalling Avast worked for me.
    can ctrl alt delete, start task manager, open run. type in control, go to programs and features in the control panel an uninstall Avast.

  • This ‘FIX’ has been running for 45 mins and seems to be ‘hung’ just like the problem it purports to ‘fix’. Please add to these instructions: how to exit while the ‘fix’ is still running. I’m just going to kill this process off in Task Manager as that shows that it is NOT using any CPU…just taking up space unfortunately.

  • Hi there,
    I’m having multiple issues with my start menu failing to work, got the critical error message yesterday. Found a fix on youtube.
    1. (right click on desktop
    2.Create new folder
    3.click on file
    4. scroll to command prompt
    5. open command prompt as admin
    6. type in sfc/scan now
    7.wait until 100% complete
    8.restart computer.

    Sadly I think this isn’t a proper fix but it got my menu working again yesterday. Today the start menu has failed to work again.
    Shame on you microsoft, you’re becoming notorious for releasing inferior products to your consumers.

  • Worked for me in a couple of minutes. The Cortana/Search icon has changed from a circle to a magnifying glass after the fix, and start menu response is snappy. Thanks!

  • How long is it supposed to take, because for me it’s just running through all my files and taking a very long time

  • It worked, but I have to put the code in each time I start up my computer. If there is a way to save the process as a desktop macro, that would be handy.

    Also, whilst the Start menu gets up and running, it doesn’t show the apps held within the listed folders.

    Come on Micro$oft, get a new KB sorted out and fix this.

  • Is there a way to reverse what this does? Ever since I used this on my laptop a few months back the start menu just periodically opens by itself. At first I didn’t care cause I rarely used this pc but now I’m on an extended trip and all I have is this laptop. If anyone could shine some light on the situation that would be great.
    Thank you.

  • Thanks you so much for broking the Store and Edge, and not fixing that f***ing Start menu and Cortana. Seriously. What the hell? We really need to get an undestroyable update that just f**k up everything? -.-“

  • i cant open my start menu and my cortana is not working so what am i going to do if i cant open my start menu ?? ans this fast please

  • Initially I got start10 which replaced my windows 10 start menu and made me feel more comfortable that the machine would not then be a brick. Then I backed everything up as for some reason something I had done had deleted the old installation files so return to windows 7 was not an option. Then I went through the event codes and found 2 drivers which were giving me problems p17runE and some related to old display drivers. I uninstalled all my old hardware control programs including Asus, creative and nvidia stuff and then all of a sudden it sprung into life ( had already rebuilt my search index). So I cannot point you exactly where it was resolved bit can say that at least for my case it could be solved ( I had start menu refusing to come up and search box not allowing typing.

  • Sorry, It didn’t work. Powershell thought that the pipe (|) was directed toward a file called ‘Foreach’ What version of DOS are you using?
    I suspect that mine didn’t get upgraded with the W 10 install. This thing is a mess it has some W-7 functionality still and some W-8 as well as W-10. I initially got it working after a full stop error at the point load/run of the start menu and Cortana. I managed to do a W-7 restore to an earlier point after a w-10 update by getting to the control panel through the menu on desktop folder. At the moment, the computer is semi-stable, but left click on the menu and Cortana are not working. After the upgrade the registry was a mess and after I got that cleaned up everything seemed to stabilize until the next update. I have blocked Microsoft from further updates for the moment, using my Modems IP and URL filters.

  • Works for me
    Thanks so much for the help
    A+ all the way
    First thought it was Avast
    But updated Avast
    Still think Avast may be a cause for it not working right
    But
    Now this fix described here fixed it completely
    Thanks for the help
    Appreciated

  • Wow. I had been pulling my hair out with frustration. It all working again. I do hope that I haven’t got to do this regularly. Thanks for the help. All I have to do now is try to re-establish my network connection to my desktop since that got upgraded. Why is nothing ever easy with Microsoft.

  • Tried this, all i get is “Get-AppXPackage’ is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.”

  • No joy here. Broken start menu, search box, cortana and edge. Happened after one if the 3 recent updatss, but not sure if that is the cause. Managed a system restore but same problem exists. Have regenerated the search index, done sfc and another microsoft verification. Also done the powershell here to recreate apps but didn’t change. Tried changing windows themes and adding user as others have suggested.
    Was just about to reinstall and loose my user account when I installed stargate’s start10 and although it strips out all the useful windows 10 apps features at least I have my PC back until microsoft can sort this mess out.
    Am I going to install windows 10 on my other PC – NO!
    It was great while it worked, but then ….

    • I have the same problem… I thought I was the only one who had this problem… Do you (or someone else) how I can fix this problem (broken start menu, search box, cortana and edge)?

  • THANK YOU IT FINALLY WORKED!!! YESS! Before doing this i couldnt do much stuff like using the start bar, microsoft edge (dont really use), notification centre, and search! Thanks!!!

  • I had no start button no edge and no search or action center, i tryed the appXpackage with no joy. I did run a registry cleaner before it started having issues and i didn’t back up the registry so I right clicked start and went to system. There was 1 restore point i was able to revert to from this afternoon as i only installed this morning ๐Ÿ™‚

  • Thank YOU for this solution. I took a chance on it and it worked. Saved me a lot of reloading hassles and investigation / research time. I hope Microsoft fixes this permanently.

  • This fix worked! Than you, Thank you, Thank You! I have been struggling for a week to find a fix for Start menu not opening. All’s well that ends well. ๐Ÿ™‚

  • Along with the start menu and cortana problem, I couldn’t adjust my volume by right clicking on the sound icon at the bottom right of the screen. This solution fixed all of my problems. thank you!

  • same problem with the Start Menu…it happened after i’ve uninstalled app Start Menu 8 from IObit. tried your above options in remedying but failed. no choice but to go back installing the app.

  • What is the meaning of Key in Powershell in the black window and hit Enter ? After opening command prompt as admin,and when i direct paste that code in cmd , it shows me error message “Get-AppXPackage’ is not recognized as an internal or external command,
    operable program or batch file.” Please help me to solve this problem.

  • I have used on upgrade from Win 7 Pro SP 1, Win 8.1 twice and each time it worked as advertised. Maybe patience is needed in some cases ;).

  • Have installed Win X 3 times and had to use this fix effectively with each installation. Excellent work and Thanks for the effort to all involved!

  • How long does this take to work? I’ve been “processing” it for over an hour now and it’s still working. It doesn’t look like much progress was made though.

  • The PowerShell did not work for me. Here is how I fixed it:

    -create two new users (e.g. user1 and user2) with admin rights. logout.
    -login as user1 and verify that start menu works. log out.
    -login as user2 and browse into “C:\Users\user1\AppData\Local\TileDataLayer\Database”
    -copy all files in the folder and paste them into “C:\Users\xxx\AppData\Local\TileDataLayer\Database” (where xxx is the user affected by this issue)
    -log out user2 and and login as user that was affected. Start menu should work now again (reset to default though).

    • OOoopppsss! Sorry it does work , just took a while to load. *Applause* it’ll do till proper fix is sorted (Thank-you kindly) ๐Ÿ™‚

  • well,I had just the same issue with Cortana and the Start menu and just re started my pc and it did work again..

  • My PC is not booting up at all its not showing anything when i turn on the power button nothing this stupid windows 10 im so pissed and i regret upgrading to stupid windows 10

    • I hate win 10. Gave me headache with Ethernet (only WiFi worked). Start button didn’t work. Thanks for the solution. It made Start button working.

    • I thank you for the solution worked. The issue though is not these small difficulties it is the failure of Microsoft to provide direct customer support with technicians to provide assistance. It is high infuriating that we the millions of customers who have made Mr Gates and his associates wealthy beyond belief are too cheap to give employment to several hundred customer support personnel to aid those who have purchased Microsoft products.

  • I pasted Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register ($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml”}
    and get
    ‘Get-AppXPackage’ is not recognized as an internal or external command,
    operable program or batch file.!!!

  • I’m having the same problem. I tried both methods and neither of them worked. I upgraded from windows 7.

    What is odd is that sometimes it looks briefly as if it has worked. My original desktop will show for a few seconds, then it disappears.

    Also, it seems as if Wimdows 10 takes much longer to boot up than 7.

    I also had the sound icon in the task bar disappear for a while.

    I have taken all the available updates, but no change.

    It’s a bit sad that one of the major features of Windows 10, namely the return of the start button and the availability of the old desktop doesn’t work out of the box.

  • after pasting command in command prompt (admin ) it started installing some app but every time it failed or deleted. i have installed ibot uninstaller and again and again a window pops up and say “***(file name) this file is not deleted properly some left over are their and give option of clean. does it mean the app installed are deleted automatically by own. and my start menu and cortana is not working. even adding of another user is not working.

  • I tried six different fixes before yours. Yours was the only one that worked! I cannot thank you enough. It took a bit after the script ran for the fix to work but it eventually did where all others failed. It’s definitely related to the OS itself and not a third party app. I only use this machine for work, so nobody was running anything unannounced. Great job!

  • Thank you very much. After wasting most of the day hunting for solutions – which didn’t work, I came across yours – Perfect! ๐Ÿ™‚

  • I encountered this problem with released Windows 10 Enterprise and your fix worked. Thanks very much for the assistance.

  • i am unable to open settings in my PC. i click the settings icon and a window just flashes in front and then disappear before i could even see that. Likewise i am unable to put chrome as my default browser and my PC doesn’t help forgetting a selected network for that is also associated with settings option.
    anyone who could help me with this issue??

  • Guys, I’m sorry! The Powershell command seems to be blocking in the “3dbuilder” processing…
    What should I do? It has been doing the command for 3 hours now…

  • How long should this command take? It’s been sitting there for a while not doing anything with a green box and yellow writing and a process bar that’s not moving.

  • The powershell script worked for me. Got me back up to what may be normal after a day ‘n’ half of chasing other solutions.
    Does anybody have an idea of the cause of this?

    In my case I was trying to disable OneDrive and had succeeded on the 6 Aug (I thought). Then on 8 Aug I suddenly could not save files because of no permission. Checked updates and found that KB2267602 had been installed.

    The observables for me were:
    Task bar right click, Single Click (Double click opens app), Search window & Start button (no start page) all do not work.

    —————————————————————————————————————————————
    For anybody that is interested i am reporting on my adventure on installing and setting up Windows 10 in a Google+ collection here:

    Anybody is welcome to look over my shoulder as I go.
    https://plus.google.com/collection/A9nTf Hashtags begin with win10 e.g. #win10Tips, #Win10Search, etc

    Again Thanks for the help – much appreciated

    regards
    -=crl=-

  • Thank you so much ….. I am bad at technology…. but your instructions were so clear… my start menu is now working

    • I am new to the Windows 10 operating system and didn’t know how to solve the start menu issue. Thanks to your information my broken start menu is working again. Great!

  • I had this issue and it was because I had another machine that was running an old preview build. Once I upgraded it to the final build everything started working again. It had even broke the Cortana on my phone.

  • Thanks, it worked perfectly!
    I installed fresh Windows 10 the latest build and somehow I had a problem that few Store apps had no icons on Start Menu (like Calculator, Alarm Clock, Camera, etc.)
    After this – everything was fixed. Thanks.

  • You are a legend, thanks for the help,after trying to get help from microsoft all night and getting none.A+ advice

  • Did not work for me!
    I’ve tried to install Windows 10 four times now and the start menu still fails to work.
    Pasted the above text into Powershell with no success.
    I can’t even create a new account user, as Windows 10 says that I must download an app to do this, but I can’t download the app because the app store fails to open.
    Microsoft should get things right before they push out a major update like this!
    Luckily I’ve managed to get back to Windows 7 with a disk image that I had created.

  • I have 18 Computers here, ONLY have the issue on ONE, this is odd, since I run Avast on all… Nothing has helped thus far, hence I am happy that I kept a clone of the original drive, so I am still able to use Windows 7, I upgraded from Windows 7 Ultimate, something about this machine is probably the issue, tried all of the above and still no pie. will keep on the research, and if necessary, just do a clean installation and then try again.

  • I disabled UAC completely and it broke metro apps and the start menu. Leaving it up one notch from the bottom fixed it. Had to use Win-X to get into the control panel.

  • That powershell thing works, BUT I need to do it everytime I start up the computer, so it’s not quite the fix I was hoping..

    • Something or the other is putting your pc into the same problem again. Because mine and others experiences says that it fixes it for good unless the cause is still present.

  • How long should powershell take to run? I followed the instructions, and I’ve been waiting for a new command line for about ten minutes.

  • For me when i enter “Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register “$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml”}” it says ‘Get-AppXPackage’ is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.

  • Cool! I was desperate since it was my main pc. But because of the author, I am able to use the computer. Thanks Narendar Singh!

  • I have found if you are running Avast antivirus, uninstall it restart the computer and everything works great!!

  • This expert advice was exactly the right solution for me.

    After doing the free upgrade to Win 10 from Win 7 on my wintel PC the start screen could be viewed by clilcking the start button. But after a few days, possibly as a result of experimenting with the new settings, the start screen disappeared and could not be activated by clicking the start button.

    Executing the above command in Windows Powershell did the trick for me.

    Many thanks

  • Tried houseman’s technique as well as the one on this page neither worked. I don’t want to make a new user account! I shouldn’t have to! Hopefully microsoft has an update to fix this soon!
    P.S. I get a loading symbol when clicking on the Windows button like it is trying to load but doesn’t.

    • Same here (also get a loading symbol but nothing happens), and none of these solutions worked for me, but restoring the system to previous version (before the last update) worked. So it seems that for me, it was the last update that caused this issue.

    • try hitting the windos button while doing powershell process, or try doing it more than twice, worked for me ๐Ÿ™‚

  • I had this same problem after updating to windows 10 from Windows 7 ultimate and ran a few updates.

    When I ran that powershell script it did not restore the start button functionality even after rebooting.

    To fix this:
    * I turned off my wifi connection
    * disabled Norton Antivirus firewall and autoprotect
    * ran powershell as administrator (location: C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe by right clicking it and selecting administrator), the script ran without issue.
    * the start button still will not work
    * go to task manager and ended the windows explorer task
    * from the task manager ran new task: explorer, and the start button now works
    * re-enabled Norton anti-virus and autoprotect
    * turned wifi back on
    * all is right in the world

    Thanks everyone for this terrific thread, just wanted to add my own experience.

    Cheers!

  • Works like a charm ๐Ÿ™‚

    THANKS for sharing.

    It’s a pity that even in the official release such a severe problem still occurs.

    • Me too, but the search box was working. The only problem was Cortana wasn’t in the start menu/apps list but a Search app

  • I just get a lot of error messages when I type the command into PowerShell so it doesn’t seem to work for me.

    I want to try making a new User Account but I don’t know where to find it. Since I cannot use the search function I don’t know where to locate these settings.

    Please help!

  • It works for me!! thanks. Windows 10 Build 10240 also I am using AVAST Internet Security software. Thanks

  • It didn’t work for the first time; but i ran it again. and worked on second time. Thank you very much.

  • when i type a powershell it tells that the acess is denied, and yes i did open command promt as an admin… what should i do ?

  • The first option has solved my problem. The startbutton works again. The “Internetzugriff” Button shows the optional connections again too.
    Ebo

  • First fixed only worked, after uninstalling bitdefender.
    Maybe Win 10 does not like some antivirus.
    This fixed my Laptop and Desktop.

  • Hi,

    After trying the first method (and other reg hacks on the net that did not work), I found myself trying the second solution, i.e. creating a new user.

    This worked BUT is not ideal. It seems we will always be at the mercy of another corrupt user profile, where the only fix is to create another user, transfer data, install 3rd party progs, etc, ad infinitum…

    Any other possible fix/windows update/workaround in the horizon?

    Thanks

    • Agreed. But unfortunately, no other solution that I’m aware of at this point. Will surely update the post if I do.

  • I had just this same problem. Not only Start wouldn’t work but also Search (the little magnifying glass) and all the icons in the right hand corner were dead as well!
    But this solution worked! Thank you!

  • thanks alot love you guyz this worked out for mee… Get-AppXPackage | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register “$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml”}

  • is anyone else getting a crap load of red error messages as it is doing its job? or am i the only one >.>

  • Did nothing but an update yesterday, rebooted and still no start flyout or notifications. Today while working, I clicked the clock to see the calendar and bam, it came up… so did the notifications, and now my start flyout works again. I don’t get it. Will create a system recovery point just in case lol.

    • Well, in my previous encounters, it was in fact caused by system restore. So I don’t know if a system restore to same point will fix it next time, but yep can surely try ๐Ÿ™‚

  • It worked for me. ๐Ÿ™‚
    Upgraded from win7 to 10.
    Start button worked for a few times and then decided not to work anymore after a few days.
    Tried the fix and voila! All is good.

  • It worked for me too, however as an IT guys inside a domain, I still have issues with cortana not working and with Adding my Microsoft Account. When I try to add my MS account it just closes and doesn’t connect.

  • I tried the first option twice still my start menu isn’t working. I also, tried to create a second account unfortunately I am not able to do that. Please help!

  • Brilliant.
    Worked for me.

    PS run as admin:

    Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register “$($_.Ins
    tallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml”}

    Many thanks

    • Besides Start, are you also not able to access PC Settings? Try:
      1. Press Windows Key + R
      2. Enter – Explorer.exe shell:AppsFolder\Windows.ImmersiveControlPanel_cw5n1h2txyewy!microsoft.windows.immersivecontrolpanel
      3. Press enter.

      If settings open up, go to User Accounts and add a new user. Else create via CMD. Steps can be found here – http://www.overclock.net/t/259110/create-user-account-via-cmd

  • Tried everything, then finally changed the account type from Standard to Administrator and the Start Menu was back. This is not good.

  • How can I paste that command from my phone to my pc…it wont connect plus iv tried to type it in manually but wont respond is there any other way to paste that command prompt can anyone help me please my pc is down and I need it for work heeelp!!!!..

    • Copy in your phone and save it to a text file and you can then send over the text file to PC via bluetooth or USB cable.

      • Hi mate thanks for getting back to me..but iv already tried that it just wont respond to anything it doesn’t pick up my phone at all.. it only seems to have right click functions and it wont open anything at all no files no emails no browsers nothing..have you got a plan B .lol..

  • After hitting the enter, i have been prompted with message, couldnt be installed because resources it modifies are currently in use and asked to close Microsoft.Windows.ShellExperienceHost_CW5n1h25xyew!App, how to close and install AppPackage. Please let me know if you have a solution to this. Thanks

  • It worked for me with: right click on Start – search – PowerShell – right click on POwerShell (x86) – run as administrator and paste your command – Enter.
    Thank you very much!

  • It does not work for me. Windows 10 keeps losing internet connectiom as well. I am backing everything up and going back to windows 7. When this pc ends its days i will NEVER use windows at home again. Microsoft is shit.

    • Just confuses me more and more. Why would display drivers cause that now? IDK what Microsoft has done there ๐Ÿ˜

      • For my NVidia graphic card I took them from official site:
        http://www.geforce.co.uk/drivers

        I knew that I need them because I had really low resolution after an upgrade from Win7 to Win10 and I couldn’t change it in the settings. I’m not sure if the drivers helped or just restart. I had many things not working correctly (e.g. Edge browser was not able to open any page). After installation of the drivers and restart the start menu was working fine, but still some components wasn’t working correctly (Calendar didn’t wanted to sync with my Google account). After another restart everything started to work fine.

  • Method 2 worked for me! I did get the start menu but I do have some other issues that still need corrected. Thanks so much!

  • The powershell command seems to be making some progress but it is very very slow. I’ve had it running all night and it is processing the third entry only.

    • Seems like something is interfering with command. Because it would take 2-3 minutes at the most to complete all that it wants to.

  • Thank you very much,
    Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register “$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml”}

    method works perfectly.
    even in build 10130

  • Ran twice to no avail, saw they had an update yesterday and hoped it’d resolve it. Still no start menu flyout.

      • You can get to command prompt by creating a folder on your desktop, opening that, clicking on ‘file’ on the top left and then opening cmd with admin privileges from there
        idk if you need to but you’ll probably want to also key in ‘cd C:\’ and press enter into cmd as well before doing the other commands suggested.

  • Hello !
    I’ve pasted the command on Powershell and press on Enter but il’s written : “command Add-AppxPackage on the position 1 of pipeline of the command. Enter values for following settings :
    Register : ”
    somebody can help me please ??

  • Basically I ended up resetting and doing a clean re-install to get it to work. Took a day and was an absolute ball-ache but it does run well (although quite slow initially).
    Still hold the temptation to go back to windows 8 (even though after the the reset the easy rollback option isn’t given anymore..)

  • Can’t get it going either on my Win 10 Pro upgrade. Was working, then just stopped. Runs the commands no problem but still no start or notification area.

  • i cant get this to work because i cant right click on the task bar either, so i cant run power shell as an administrator but i can get it up.

      • No i dint want to do that.
        I did get it to work however.

        I created a repair disk for windows 10 through command prompt and I ran that and used the repair option. it reset all of the computers setting and uninstalled all applications and kept all files. the applications are all simple to get back.

  • OH MY GOSH!!!! You fixed it all for me!!!! Thank you, thank you, thank you!!! I love my windows 10. I had lost my desktop and start menu

    and used method 2 and it all worked perfectly. You are amazing!!!!

    (PS) Everyone is talking about some technical windows 10, mine actually says Windows 10 Home. It’s awesome!!! (Happy dancing)

    • Glad that it was helpful. BTW, Technical is seen so often because Windows 10 has just come out from Technical Preview (test stage) to the final consumer version. You’re having the right one ๐Ÿ™‚

  • Omg…
    Thank you.
    I’ve been trying to figure this out for 2 days now, it was driving me insane.
    It should also be noted that if it’s not letting you get into an elevated powershell, you can type “powershell” first into the powershell, and then type:

    Start-Process PowerShell โ€“Verb RunAs

    and then press enter.

    You should then be able to run the above listed code, and that should work. ๐Ÿ˜€

  • I had the same problem. My fix was just to wait there is downloading going on it the background that you cant see unless you can get into the settings menu. Depending on your speed it will take a wile and it should fix after you reboot or two. I also recommend that once you can get into the setting menu would be to turn off the setting that let other computer to download windows 10 from your computer so its not slowing down your interned and using up your bandwidth. just google it if you can’t find it.

  • I have to continually do the second fix to get mine to show and it also affect the notification app as well. And when the start menu does show, it won’t open any app that I click on. I have to go through my Files and folders on the task bar to get anything to work. And my AV And Firewall, both are from Vipre, the Anti-Virus works but not the Vipre Firewall. I called your help line, but all the guy did was try to sell me a service plan for $500

  • I’ve tried the powershell method numerous times with luck. Also am unable to create a new user. I tried to reset the Windows 10 and that also failed after going through the entire process. I took a risk that didn’t pay off because now I can’t revert back to Windows 7. Meanwhile my 14 yr old has had zero issues on his computer. He loves Windows 10. I regret my decision to do the upgrade.

    I really have no desire to do a clean install. Does anyone know if Microsoft is going to come up with a solution soon? I would rather wait for a patch. I’m using Classic Shell so at least the computer has a Widows 7 feel to it.

  • It worked on the first try! THANK YOU for the info! Just had to wait for the script to finish and it returns to the prompt.

  • Guys I’ve just had the same problem on my desktop. I got it working again using the method described but all the program folders were empty.

    I was just about resigned to having to link them all in manually when I thought I would check the registry for errors using CCleaner (I use this all the time).

    About 30% of the way through all the programs started appearing in all the folders.

    It might not work for you but it’s worth a try.

    I use the free version of CCleaner.

    To get to Command Prompt (Admin) I right clicked on the Start menu (not the taskbar) and it was one of 10 listed there.

    • Some here had the issue appearing only after running CCleaner and you managed to fix it that way. IDK what Microsoft has done with Windows 10. No consistency of errors ๐Ÿ˜›

  • Now after attempting reboot the system has crashed. This is the worst decision I’ve ever made. As soon as I can this is going back to windows 8 ?

  • Great blog you have got here.. It’s hard to find good quality writing like yours these days. I seriously appreciate individuals like you! Take care!!

  • I’m having issues with actually getting it to run as administrator..
    Whether using method 1 or 2, the administrator option either doesn’t come up or won’t initialise (or do anything). Attempting to run Powershell without administrator on just brings up the red error message telling me ‘access denied’. Help please?

    • Start menu -> All Apps -> Scroll down to W Section -> Window PowerShell -> Right click on Power Shell. Good luck ๐Ÿ˜‰

        • I had the same problem …. but i had luck and found another way to the power shell application
          try this (i think just possible if you have an foulder on you dektop)

          1.Open any foulder on you Desktop
          2.On the top right , there should be a “search-box”
          3.Just type “Powershell” in this box

          !!!! You could have too many foulders there but there is one foulder where you can see a blue “thing” and a white symbol in it !!!!

          And thats how i opened it and i could Run it ! ๐Ÿ˜€

          Dor me …. it didnt worked

          • When you right click on the Start Menu there’s an option to open the CMD as an adminstrator so you can use the method 2, however I don’t know the name of this function in english as mine is in spanish but if I had to translate it should say something like “System Symbol (Administrator)”.

          • @3picLucke, thanks a lot for taking the time to share your work around. I fixed the problem using your search method.

            @Irving Rodrรญguez, you’re right when I right-click on the start menu, the “Command Prompt (Admin)” is indeed available, however when I click on it nothing happens.

        • try with your keyboard: (Windows+X) then choose the control panel if you would like to open your Control Panel window or (Windows+R) to open the Run menu, type “C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\”, enter and right-click Powershell.exe and choose Run As Administrator then just try the command as stated above.

          Hope it helps, cheers ๐Ÿ™‚

          • Thanks Aleph! This worked. Initially I couldn’t
            right click the Powershell icon to choose to run as administrator and this did the trick ๐Ÿ™‚

    • What I did is press Windows+R, typed in cmd to get to the command prompt, then entered in the following command:

      Start-Process powershell -Verb runAs

      This opened PowerShell with administrator privileges.

      • Sorry – I mean I pressed Windows+R, typed in “powershell”, then typed in the following command:

        Start-Process powershell -Verb runAs

        This opened PowerShell with administrator privileges.

  • Thanks so much it did the trick and fixed the start button and the search option.
    Looked at a lot of information over the past two day and this was the one that was clear, to the point, and detailed
    enough so it could be done.

    Again thanks!

  • How long do we have to wait for this PowerShell thing to work? I tried it twice and then stopped it because nothing was happening. This time I’ve left it running for half an hour and it’s still done nothing. It just says it’s inititialized and nothing more.

    • Two Tips:
      Powershell doesn’t work right with Windows Firewall Disabled.

      Deleting the files in: C:\Users\\AppData\Local\TileDataLayer I had some that wouldn’t delete, but this step was required to get my Start Menu back. I don’t know if it would have worked on it’s own. It was after I found the firewall problem.

      But I had other issues including Not functional Task Manager (had to use procexp.exe instead), Recycle Bin right click function not working. Win-R sluggish, and missing Start/Ctr-ESC/WIN/Rightclick functionalty for start.

    • Perfect. Cannot thank you enough. Ran it twice and it worked perfectly. Also rebooted and everything perfect.

    • I followed Method 2. I ran the process once. It wasn’t clear that it was finished, so I rebooted and was able to get the Start Menu by left-clicking on the Start icon. It may have been coincidence, but Windows 10 did update during the reboot process. Perhaps it was a combination of both Method 2 and the update.

      I upgraded from Windows 7 on a HP Pavilion dv6 Notebook x64. It’s still clunky and slow, but I’m hopeful that it will improve with updates. At least I have a month to go back, and now have a way of doing so since I can access the Start Menu. This was by far the most helpful site I found in gaining access to the Start Menu.

    • It took a really long time for me (1-2 hours?) with a bunch of different processes that ran within the Powershell window, then I think I did something that made the computer freeze. I reset the computer and the start menu worked.

    • Hopefully there will be, but considering its been here since long and hasn’t got fixed, maybe it will only be fixed when Bill Gates or Satya Nadella gets to face this lol, if ever they themselves use Windows ofc.

  • Start button, Cortana, and Explorer not working on task bar. One way to prevent this is to never log out or turn your computer off, ever. I am uninstalling Windows 10 and re-installing it. If it don’t work then uninstalling for good. Going back to Windows 8.1

  • icrosoft Windows [Version 10.0.10240]
    (c) 2015 Microsoft Corporation. Vลกechna prรกva vyhrazena.

    C:\WINDOWS\system32>powershell
    Windows PowerShell
    Copyright (C) 2015 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

    PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register “$($_.Ins
    tallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml”}
    Add-AppxPackage : Cannot find path ‘C:\AppXManifest.xml’ because it does not exist.
    At line:1 char:38
    + … | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register “$($_.I …
    + ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo : ObjectNotFound: (C:\AppXManifest.xml:String) [Add-AppxPackage], ItemNotFoundException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : PathNotFound,Microsoft.Windows.Appx.PackageManager.Commands.AddAppxPackageCommand

    please help. how to fix it?

  • I have an alienware x51 and I had the windows start button not working and Microsoft edge not working either with the error message that the licence had expired. I just used Method 2 and everything is working now. Thank you! Thank you!

  • Got the upgrade from windows 8.1 and everything was working fine, then after restart Start menu, Cortana, Edge, Search or the Store, etc. has stopped working.
    Tried both the method, neither of it worked for me.
    Even can’t create new user.
    Would appreciate if someone can help me fix this problem.
    Thanks in advance.

    • Why can’t you create a new useer? BTW do try this:
      Press Win + R > Type SERVICES.MSC > hit Enter.
      Right click on APPLICATION IDENTITY and select START

      Restart your computer after a few mins. Let’s see if you get some luck.

  • I’ve had iobit uninstaller and went to restart my PC, when everything came back up and I attempted to click on the start menu nothing happened; however, it told me what I believe to be the searchmenu and Cortana had some leftovers.

    So I tried your tips and no luck. I am not sure if I should clean install my PC at this point or what?

  • Awesome, that did the trick for me. My start menu was already working, but search wasn’t. Now it does.
    Important is just that Windows Firewall service is running, otherwise this fix won’t work.
    Ta!

  • Just like MANY other people I’ve also got this problem with the start menu and taskbar. I can’t left click on start menu, right click on programs, left click on taskbar icons. I therefore also can’t use Cortana, Edge, Search or the Store. I had Windows 7 installed and upgraded to Windows 10. All was working for the first day and then suddenly after a forced restart it changed to the current situation. Not sure about the initial reason, I had to install drivers for my AMD Mobile Graphics card but nothing fancy, no deep operations in the registry etc.

    HOWEVER if I am logging in as administrator the start menu and taskbar are working perfectly. But of course in this account I have totally different settings and am restricted so I can’t open most programs. So it has to do something with the user account. Since my taskbar stopped working I also can’t access several areas within the new settings app. For example I cannot add another user, even when I am logged in as administrator. And if I’d like to return to Windows 7 the installation wouldn’t allow it since the administrator account which was added during the installation has to be removed by me – which isn’t possible.

    So all in all: THANK YOU Microsoft, for screwing up again! (not mentioning the countless other bugs such as placeholder text, design/UI inconsistencies, installation of wrong drivers, files forgetting which apps to open in etc.).

    I tried the Powershell options btw and it came up with screens and screens of red error messages just like shown here in other comments. So I really hope someone (or MAYBE even Microsoft), finds out a solution for this mess.

    Kinda unbelievable that such a huge company with big test program etc. can’t fix basic problems like this..

    • Wouldn’t vouch for it, but because somebody claimed it to be working, do try:
      1. Right-click at Start and click RUN
      2. type SERVICES.MSC and press the enter key
      3. right click on APPLICATION IDENTITY and select START
      4. Reboot after a few minutes.

  • Just recently updated from Windows 7 a couple days ago. Everything i saw seemed like it would be a good upgrade, im starting to think i made a mistake… Tried this patch 4 times now, full shut down and reboot in between. one time it gave me an error that shut the computer down and fixed repairs in my c drive even. Still cannot get start menu to work. Definitely do not want to loose everything as i have a lot, is there an alternative method to fix this? Can i reinstall the update to see if it fixes it? Am i basically screwed and need to factory reset to go back to 7?

  • This didn{t work for me 2 days ago, but today I tried it out and it run perfectly. If is not working for you just give it a few days and try again

  • Method 2 worked great! Glad I didn’t have to throw my tablet on the ground and smash it! Thank you so much ๐Ÿ™‚

  • thanxxxxxxxxxx bud you’ve just saved me from another windows installation
    you are such a genius ๐Ÿ™‚

    • press win+ E to bring up explorer.
      in search, type powershell.exe
      in results, right click Powershell.exe and choose run as adminitrator.
      in powershell admin, put this ” Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register “$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml”} “and wait some minutes

      Maybe there is an easier way, but it works

  • this page needs to be the first result on google when people are searching for a solution. thanks a bunch for the fix! much appreciated!

  • Just a quick note to say thank you very much for this tip!! All the other pages I’ve seen talk about creating a new user profile from scratch and getting rid of the current one. Your Powershell wizardry fixed my problem on the final release of Windows 10 on a laptop that had been upgraded from Windows 7. Powershell churned away for about 30 seconds, gave no errors, and finished. My start menu didn’t work immediately, but after about 5-10 seconds, the desktop and task bar both seemed to refresh, much like hitting F5 would do when browsing a folder, and lo-and-behold, the start menu was back in action!! I do wonder if the problem gets caused by either installing Classic Shell (I like both the new and Win95-style start menus), or by removing all the pre-installed rubbish that’s on the new start menu (Candy Crush, Minecraft).

    Anyway, once again, thank you very much for the tip!!

    • An update to last night’s post: My Mum’s laptop has just experienced the same problem. She hasn’t cleaned rubbish off her new Windows 10 installation yet, and doesn’t use Classic Shell. The one thing we do have in common, however, is CCleaner. …And CCleaner was the last thing that was run before the start menu broke. I think that CCleaner has a bug or incompatability that breaks Windows 10’s start menu. The first method, using Windows Powershell, should work for instances of this problem caused by CCleaner, though. Right-click the start button, get an administrator command prompt, type powershell, and run the command when the powershell (“ps”) prompt appears.

      • There! We have a clear culprit now. Something that CCleaner thinks is waste might be an important configuration file for the start menu. Plus, I don;t think you need Ccleaner. Windows doesn’t create so much junk that would require regular cleaning. Temporary files will just come over again no matter how many times you clear.

        • I am starting to agree with that point of view. Whilst first impressions of tools such as Revo Uninstaller, Bleachbit and CCleaner reveal that they are freeing up gigabytes of “wasted space” on windows installations, I suspect that many of their clearing options are far too aggressive. I have noticed that Windows recreates much of the cleared items by the next reboot.

          I suspect that their place is in cleaning an old installation, like when your gran asks why her 8 year old Windows XP or Vista machine that is never shut down properly, is running slow and locking-up. Not for regular use by a relatively computer-literate, careful user.

          I have done some experimenting. I have done one act of “cleaning”, followed by a re-boot and checked for the issue. I have then repeated this for every cleaning program I’ve ever used:

          1) Latest version of CCleaner – No problems (any more).
          2) Latest Bleachbit with latest winapp2.ini – No problems.
          3) Revo Uninstaller (last free version available) (junk files cleaner and windows cleaner) – No problems.
          4) Windows temporary-files cleaning wizard (cleanmgr.exe) – No problems.
          5) Auslogics Disk Defrag with “delete temporary files” enabled – No problems.
          6) Auslogics Registry Cleaner (latest version at time of writing – could be fixed by the time you read this) – START MENU AND CORTANA BROKEN
          7) Little System Cleaner (or separate components by Little apps) – No problems.

          From this, it looks like most programmers are updating their tools, and that the issue was related to Windows’ way of hanling some sort of history (last used items. perhaps?). Auslogics’ registry cleaner evidently sees something to do with the start menu as an error, and deletes it. CCleaner et al must have originally deleted too much, relying on Windows re-creating whatever key it was that they got rid of.

  • Well i upgraded 2 days ago my windows 8.1 to windows 10, and 1 day everything was working fine.Next day after i run cc cleaner to clean up temp files and make my windows faster. After i reboot my pc my start button got locked, and notification icon also got locked. I than came to this website, and used the command in powershell Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register “$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml”}. It works and enables my start screen and button and notifications icon again. But, when i reboot my pc, again the start button becomes disabled……So, i have re-run the powershell command again and again….Which sucks…I also got an internal power error, after which my laptop reboot 2-3times, the solution of that is to reinstall the amd or nvidia graphic card driver. That is resolved….But my WIN 10 start screen button gets locked everytime i restart my laptop. I even tried changing the value in registry of EnableStartMenu from 1 to 0. and 0 to 1. It’s still disabled, when i reboot the pc. But enables when i run the code Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register “$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml”}
    in powershell…..Please see if you guys can help….I have inspiron Dell n5520, 1tb hard drive, 8gb ram, core i5 third gen, amd hd 7600 series 1 gb graphic card. Help!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
    .

    • Would suggest you to remove Cleaner for a while and see if that brings some improvement. As Windows 10 is new and old softwares aren’t fully compatible with 10, some misconfigurations can happen.

    • I too have the exact same problem. Blame it on CCCleaner. I explicitly checked it out before running it and it said “Windows 10 Compatible” … typical garbage. The solution posted restores StartMenu until I reboot or logoff. UGH!!!! Hopefully someone has a fix here ???

      thanks.

    • I have had Windows 10 installed since the 29th, did the upgrade and then a clean install and have had the Start Button, Cortana and Edge become unresponsive several times. The above fix did not work, the only thing that brings it back is a reboot. I can not believe that Microsoft let this out on the final build. There have been many documented issues with this during the various technical builds and it would seem that they did not get it resolved. I wonder how long it will take them to fix this.

    • I resolved this issue by creating a Local GPO policy under computer configuration / windows settings / security settings / Application Control Policies / packaged app rules / app locker. click on “automatically create rules” and click next through all the prompts. that should fix it.

  • Method 2 worked for me
    .Be patient when PowerShell working,it takes about 2-3 minutes depending on system.

  • This is great. Am being stuck in the middle of no where. Having joined inside program of Microsoft and yet my account [email protected] still not activated. Its ridiculous but real. After installing enterprise edition of Visual studio to try my luck on cross platform application development, my quad core HP Pc freezes access to some windows functions like getting to to Start Menu as well as right clicking on the TaskBar to access some functionality. At first, I taught Microsoft has finally lock me out until I got to this miraculous site that restore my hope for real. My apologies to Microsoft. May be I will contact the support to fix my account. Thanks once again.

  • If you can’t ‘right click the icon to run powershell as an administrator, type in the following command prompt without the quotes, and it will open a new window as an admin. “Start-Process powershell -Verb runAs”

    • Thanks Sidney for this solution, but i still have the same problem on two PCs recently upgraded to windows 10 -_-‘

  • Did the upgrade yesterday from 8.1 to 10. Start menu never worked from the start. Completed the steps from the first solution & now all is ok.

    Thanks

  • Won’t let select administrator, right click powers hell does nothing, right click start button, then command prompt (admin) won’t work, can’t seem to get any methods stated to work, won’t even let me create a new user, help, this is doing my head in, why did I upgrade

  • I can’t click right on the icon of powershell for the 1st method, and the 2nd doen’t work for me.

  • well got the start menu back minus the folders being greyed out where I cant turn on anything on the bottom left besides settings, so I have no direct access to documents or anything else and just spent 2 hours trying to figure out why. Think that this is the first even version of windows that is going to bomb worse then Windows ME did

    • I agree. Windows 10 has been out to Windows Insiders since long and a lot of testing and feedback been done. Too bad for MS that they still missed out a lot of bugs.
      Anyways, what happens when you disable and re-enable those folders? Settings> Personalization> Start> Choose which folders appear on Start. Maybe try disabling, restarting and re-enabling them?

      • I can do anything to any of those settings but the settings on/off one the rest are greyed out not usable all in off position. I have had no luck trying to find even where the registry settings are for them to try to force them that way.

      • I can’t do anything to any of those settings but the settings on/off one the rest are greyed out not usable all in off position. I have had no luck trying to find even where the registry settings are for them to try to force them that way.

  • I am trying to repair using an ISO. However it is asking for a product key and then it says that product key not acceptable/

  • well i can’t do ether and i can’t make a new account since when i try to go to my setting there is none or display settings or anything

    • Right now i am waiting on a reboot to see if a restore point made yesterday does anything. Got there through safe mode.

      Part of me wants to go back to windows 7 but i deleted a bunch of software that was not 10 compatible or needed for external networked drives and other stuff

      2 hours now fighting this start menu and still not paid the bills i wanted to when i say down at desktop.

  • why does this just start happening? I sat down to the computer turned it on and boom start menu not working. FIgures after last night when I had thought I finally tweaked out all the issues in the upgrade from 7.

    This seems like though it lost the user profile information because its also asking me to choose default programs again

  • It worked. Besides the Start Button and the Apps, right-clicking on the taskbar was also not working. This method fixed that too.

  • Wow, I have no luck with windows. This is just another problem I have encountered amongst the thousands of others.
    The second method of getting powershell to run as an administrator works for me, though I get an encyclopedia of errors delivered to me and STILL I am stuck in the same position. Does anybody else have a method to get the start &/cortana to work without having to reinstall Windows 10 again?

  • I rebooted my machine and it worked. However, after a couple hours of it being up, the start button wouldn’t work. Rebooted again and it worked.

    However, for the fun of it – I tried both steps – it worked. The crazy thing about it was the powershell – when I right clicked on it – I didn’t get the pop up menu – so I rebooted and I was able to run it as administrator.

  • is there any way to format the pic running on windows 10 as I have virus in my pc and optical drive is not working as well
    I want to format the pc and run windows 10
    Pls help!!!

  • after upgrading windows 8.1 to windows 10 only my right-button-actions works on my Start search and edge -button. left button actions did not do anything.

    method 2 did not work for me

    When i created a new user and logged on with the new user the taskbar works fine, so i am going to work under a new user and transfer my usersettings to solve this upgrade problem

    mvgr

  • I tried both method but didnt work

    please help

    Windows PowerShell
    Copyright (C) 2015 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

    PS C:\Users\Rupesh> Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register “$($_.Install
    Location)\AppXManifest.xml”}
    Get-AppXPackage : Access is denied.
    Access is denied.
    At line:1 char:1
    + Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopm …
    + ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo : NotSpecified: (:) [Get-AppxPackage], UnauthorizedAccessException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : System.UnauthorizedAccessException,Microsoft.Windows.Appx.PackageManager.Commands.GetApp
    xPackageCommand

  • I tried only the second method (because i don’t catch well the first) and it worked like a charm (my start menu came back exactly the way i customized it!).

    Thank you so much ;D

  • Thanks so much !!
    It works now again. After I moved my user\Appdata\Local and Roaming from my SSD-drive C to my HDD-drive D, and create a link from C to D only my right-button-actions works on my Start-button.
    Have a nice day,
    WiBo form the Netherland.

  • I had windows 8 running. after upgrade i executed above steps also. but unfortunately did not work for me.
    Any other solution??

    Add-AppxPackage : Deployment failed with HRESULT: 0x80073CF6, Package could not be registered.
    error 0x80070005: Windows cannot set up the device capabilities for the
    Microsoft.Windows.Cortana_1.4.8.152_neutral_neutral_cw5n1h2txyewy package.
    NOTE: For additional information, look for [ActivityId] 90a2e8f2-cc21-0003-41ed-a29021ccd001 in the Event Log or use
    the command line Get-AppxLog -ActivityID 90a2e8f2-cc21-0003-41ed-a29021ccd001
    At line:1 char:38
    + … | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register “$($_.I …
    + ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo : WriteError: (C:\Windows\Syst…ppXManifest.xml:String) [Add-AppxPackage], IOException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : DeploymentError,Microsoft.Windows.Appx.PackageManager.Commands.AddAppxPackageCommand

    Add-AppxPackage : Deployment failed with HRESULT: 0x80073CF6, Package could not be registered.
    error 0x80070005: Windows cannot set up the device capabilities for the
    Microsoft.BioEnrollment_10.0.10240.16384_neutral__cw5n1h2txyewy package.
    NOTE: For additional information, look for [ActivityId] 90a2e8f2-cc21-0000-a3ed-a29021ccd001 in the Event Log or use
    the command line Get-AppxLog -ActivityID 90a2e8f2-cc21-0000-a3ed-a29021ccd001
    At line:1 char:38

  • hi,
    I tired everything. windows 10 seems to be failed and corrupted. I opened cmd as administrator. I opened powershell from taskmanager as admin, and pasted the same line as the one u gave. but all am getting are full red lines, I mean all I am getting are errors. am soo much mad on this bug, like soo much, I have lots of work stopped because of this, nothing seems to work. if you know any thing please help me. thanks.

    • Unfortunately, this was the only solution I came across. Guess your best bet is to reinstall Windows 10 or go back to 8/8.1 via a clean install.

    • Try this

      Bring up start screen, type in settings and click on it. Then do the following

      Personalization> Start > Then turn off โ€œUse Start full screenโ€

  • How much time take it to work? I just get the following message:

    “Deployment operation progress: C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\Microsoft.VCLibs.120.00_12.0.21005.1_x86__8wekyb3d8bbwe\App
    Initialized”

    But nothing happened at all, I must wait? Or something is wrong?

      • I tried again and again, like 5 times, everytime was the same. Luckly when restarting, the problem was fixed. Perhaps it is not the same problem, just a variant. Thank you for helping me.

  • I ran Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register โ€œ$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xmlโ€} twice in my admin powershell and everything is in red and still doesnt work

  • i keep on getting an error message that says Add-Appxpackage : A positional parameter cannot be found that accepts argument ‘DisableDevelopmentMode’. At line:1 char:39. +โ€ขโ€ขโ€ข | Foreach {AppxPackage – โ€ขโ€ขโ€ข + ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo : InvalidArgument: (:) [Add-AppxPackage] , parameterBindingExeption
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : PositionalParameterNotFound,Microsoft.Windows.Appx.PackageManager.Commands. AddAppxPackageCommand

  • Does not work for me, Powershell runs into as much errors as successful scripts, and after completion the start doesn’t work at all anymore. No effect on click, Windows seems to try to load something but nothing shows up (no error window either).
    Figured out I had a couple strange things in my eventvwr (CTRL+R > “eventvwr”) : event id 1542, source User Profile Service, class registry unable to load…

    Working fix for me in this case: create new user profile (you may try fixing the original profile using ReProfiler (app) or by following the steps there: https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/e492a389-0f70-420b-9d1e-2a286beac698/event-id-1542-user-profile-service-and-missing-classes-root-key?forum=w7itproinstall).

    In your new user profile everything should run smoothly again (start menu, Edge seems to be sitting in local appdata user folder to be able to customize the way other modern browsers do, so should be back too).

  • Neither the start button nor the search window will work for me. I have attempted the instructions and get this:
    C:\WINDOWS\system32>powershell
    Windows PowerShell
    Copyright (C) 2015 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

    PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -Di
    sableDevelopmentMode -Register “$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml”}Get-AppX
    Package -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register ”
    $($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml”}
    ForEach-Object : Cannot bind parameter ‘RemainingScripts’. Cannot convert the
    “Get-AppXPackage” value of type “System.String” to type
    “System.Management.Automation.ScriptBlock”.
    At line:1 char:29
    + … -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Registe …
    + ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo : InvalidArgument: (:) [ForEach-Object], Parameter
    BindingException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : CannotConvertArgumentNoMessage,Microsoft.PowerSh
    ell.Commands.ForEachObjectCommand

    PS C:\WINDOWS\system32>

  • I tried this but when I execute the command in powershell (as admin) it only does this:

    ” Deployment operation progress: C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\Microsoft.VCLibs.120.00_12.0.21005.1_x86__8wekyb3d8bbwe\App
    Initialized ”

    I let it run for like an hour but nothing changed. Is this normal? Can someone help please? ๐Ÿ™‚

  • Sometimes the start menu and other stuffs not workink for me but after a slow restart it usually fix itself, so before you anything just try to restart it.

  • Unfortunately doesn’t work for me, process completed, but had lots of red error messages. Sadly the method did not work as I still can’t access my Start Menu and Cortana. And Microsoft Edge has disappeared from my taskbar.

  • I followed the directions above closely. It stopped giving me the error message, but the start menu still does not appear. What can I do now?

  • Hi all, I cant open start menu, Microsoft Egde icon is gone, i tried all methods to fix it and none worked. I want to downgrade do 7 but it can’t be done without start menu. Please someone help

  • Try this

    Bring up start screen, type in settings and click on it. Then do the following

    Personalization> Start > Then turn off “Use Start full screen”

  • Yup, that works, just put that text in powershell, wait for a few minutes ( maximum 5 minutes), you will see that code has run, all the text has gone. Try pressing the start button, and you should see that pop up.
    Thank you so much.

  • hi folks, i have migrated windows from 7 to 10 but facing lots of issues, start menu is not clickable , i have tried command prompt Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register “$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml”}
    but it is saying “Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers “is not recognised as an internal command. please help any one

    • You don’t do it in Command Prompt, but Windows Powershell opened as Admin. Please read the post as there are two methods of opening Powershell already mentioned.

  • This worked for me! I couldn’t right click on powershell either. To work around, I could right click on the start menu and click run command prompt as administrator. From there, I ran “powershell” enter. Then I pasted the command. It worked and fixed my start menu, which I used to go into settings and revert to Windows 7 :).

    Did anybody else experience strangeness that lead to the start menu not working? For me, the install went okay, but at the very end, after entering settings, it said “setting up your apps, this won’t take long” for what felt like an eternity, without the hard drive or network doing anything. Finally I hard reset. Computer loaded into this strange state where start menu and apps didn’t work. If I hit CMD+I to open settings, it said it couldn’t open the app because my trial had expired.

    • Same issue for me. Start menu didn’t work and apps (store, parameters) neither, โ€œsetting up your apps, this wonโ€™t take longโ€ during 5 or 10 minutes

      I solve the problem with the Task Manager. You can open the Task Manager with ctrl+shift+esc, click on “more” to show control bar, then file>execute, finally enter PowerShell and select the checkbox “run as administrator”

      Sorry for my English ๐Ÿ™

    • Yes, EXACTLY the same issue, only in my case rather than sitting got a long time on that screen it actually came up with Sorry, we have experienced an error… or similar, then did a memory dump and rebooted. WHen it restarted the process continued and set up, everything looked fine until… no start menu, no action center, and no Edge (which said trial period expired).

      HELP!

    • Hopefully it will be permanent, but can’t say as whatever triggered the error previously can happen again as well.

  • hi! i tried but this showed up and nothing happened.
    please help me to fix this.

    Get-AppXPackage : Access is denied.
    Access is denied.
    At line:1 char:1
    + Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopm …
    + ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo : NotSpecified: (:) [Get-AppxPackage], UnauthorizedAccessException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : System.UnauthorizedAccessException,Microsoft.Windows.Appx.PackageManager.Commands.GetApp
    xPackageCommand

    thanks

  • Hello sir,

    kindly check the issue and help me to get rid of this issue to fix the problems as I am sharing the problem error massage.

    Windows PowerShell
    Copyright (C) 2015 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

    PS C:\Users\ketan> Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register “$($_.InstallL
    ocation)\AppXManifest.xml”}
    Get-AppXPackage : Access is denied.
    Access is denied.
    At line:1 char:1
    + Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopm …
    + ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo : NotSpecified: (:) [Get-AppxPackage], UnauthorizedAccessException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : System.UnauthorizedAccessException,Microsoft.Windows.Appx.PackageManager.Commands.GetApp
    xPackageCommand

    PS C:\Users\ketan>

    • “[Get-AppxPackage], UnauthorizedAccessException” I think this means you didnt execute it on admin.

      Right-click on menu bar, proprierties, navegation (?) and select the box that say to change cmd for powershell and apply it. Ctrl+X Powershell (admin) and try again

      Sorry for bad english.

      • I pressed windows and R
        typed in powershell
        a blue screen comes up
        no icon to right click and choose run as admin
        I attempted to copy and paste the link above into that blue field but only ‘ps’ comes up
        I also get class not registered when i try and open Edge
        I’m frustrated I dont know what else to do

          • Sam, thank you… but still nothing. I hold Windows and press q and nothing happened. Still no Edge, still not able to run Norton Scan… Still can not get my action center to come up. Im so confused and frustrated…. wish I could uninstall it but can not figure out what to do since I can not use start button to get to anything…

          • Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -Disable
            DevelopmentMode -Register “$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml”}
            Get-AppXPackage : Access is denied.
            Access is denied.
            At line:1 char:1
            + Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopm …
            + ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
            + CategoryInfo : NotSpecified: (:) [Get-AppxPackage], UnauthorizedAc
            cessException
            + FullyQualifiedErrorId : System.UnauthorizedAccessException,Microsoft.Window
            s.Appx.PackageManager.Commands.GetAppxPackageCommand

            • OK, I had a little trouble with this.

              Click the Explorer icon – the yellow folder icon, OR hit Win+R and type Explorer and press Enter.

              (If this does not work, press CTRL+ALT+DELETE and click Task Manager, then click the More Details button in the bottom left of the window that appears. Then click on the File menu along the top of the new window and click Run New Task. Type in explorer.exe and press Enter)

              Click on the This PC icon, then open up the drive marked (C:)

              In the Search box in the top right corner, type in powershell.exe

              Wait for the search to go through.

              In the list, find the powershell.exe named icon – it will be light blue.

              Right-click that icon and click ‘Run as Administrator’

              Copy and paste the line as in the post above.

              Eat chocolate.

              Reboot once it has finished, and you are absolutely sure it has finished.

              This isn’t necessarily the fix for your overall issue, but it is a step-by-step on how to do what you were trying to do.

  • This works for me, but the issue repeats itself occasionally. In fact, in my case, the start menu, Cortana, and the New Notifications button on the taskbar become non-functional until I run this, sometimes multiple times on a single reboot.

  • For who’s how can’t run as admin …. type the following inside the powershell itself to open another window as administrator.

    “Start-Process PowerShell โ€“Verb RunAs” without quotes .

    hope it helps ๐Ÿ˜€

  • it still not showing my personalisation, setting ,window upadte setting… a screen pops and close down

    • type the following inside the powershell itself to open another window as administrator.

      โ€œStart-Process PowerShell โ€“Verb RunAsโ€ without quotes .

  • Are you kidding me. Failure. This is a release day and the software does not work. I tried the fixes. Nothing. Come on.

  • Powershell has said “initialized” for almost 20 minutes now and nothing else, start button, search bar, and apps like netflix and word still not opening. Suggestions?

  • I tried this and unfortunately it popped up for me after copying and pasting it access denied. I tried to do the ctrl-alt-delete and looked for the windows power shell, did not have that any where. Is anyone having the same problems as me? I cannot use my start button. Also I cannot unpin things that are now pined and its says the store cannot open. Argh windows 10

  • How long does this process take? It says it’s completed 1 of the 4 processes, but 3 are still “Processing”. It hasn’t moved in over half an hour. Is it safe to close it?

    • ctrl-alt-del.
      open task manager
      under processes tab > right click windows power shell > open file location
      right click and run as admin

      • when i follow your steps i get all the way to the powershell folder and when I right click the program does not respond any suggestions on what I do with this problem?

  • Worked for me!

    The start menu would not respond to left-clicks or the Windows key.
    Left clicking system tray icons also didn’t work.
    This fixed everything.

    Thank you very much!

  • Thanks! helped fix my problems as well! Way easy fix to a problem that others suggested more complex ones for.

  • Didn’t work for my Windows 10 Insider Enterprise Build 10070 but I’ve found a possible fix:

    1-Right click on “taskbar”
    2-Click “Disable” under “Search”, then click “Show search box”
    2.1-If you have alreadey chosen the “Disable” option, just click the “Show search box”, you can change it to your liking afterwards.
    3-Then it should be working like a bad girl once again.

    Hope this works for you as well if PowerShell method fails.

  • Solution worked for me, sigh of relief as this morning after 10166 win 10 build is decided to stop working, caps lock and other keys would work fine but msot letters (all i beleive) wouldnt work, thanks again as finding this gem of a post was a lifesaver, would be lost without it, srry to reply to your post but i didnt see option to ad my own? i highly suggest those with similar situation described above to try this fix, cant hurt

    • The option to add new comments is there at the end of the comments. I know its a bit hard to access when there are a lot of comments, but it looked sad when placed at the top. I’ve moved your comment as an independent one now.
      BTW, glad that the post was helpful ๐Ÿ™‚

  • Ok. I could not get powershell to run as admin, since I also did not have a working taskbar and could not right click on anything in the taskbar.

    What i did to get powershell to run as admin. bring up task manager , click file, then run new task, type powershell and select run as administrator.

    Then once the above command ran I had my taskbar and start menu back. I did get an error on one of the files in the list, said I had a newer one installed, but it still fixed the problem.

  • It truly works am so excited and proud that i may be able to do my work fuck windows 10 I had windows 7 already but my electronic teacher gave me a window 10 cd i didn’t know it was a fuckin preview I lost my windows 7 Opersating system do you have file I can download for free full version or recover it using my product key

    • You might be interested in waiting because the consumer release of Windows 10 is just around the corner and will start rolling by the end of this month. It is not expected to have any issues. So, you can either upgrade to Windows 10 or clean install 7 as per your wish.

  • Thanks a lot. This command has not even finished yet and my Start menu and Search function are already working..

    Awsome!

  • I FINALLY found a fix for my Start Menu issue…and I can’t even believe how simple it was. After trying, literally, every fix that has been posted on the net with no positive result, this is what I’ve found:

    “if you go to Settings/Personalisation/Start and switch off suggestions, recent programs and recently added options (the first three options shown) then the Start menu will die shortly afterward. Switching them back on will restore the menu.

    I could be wrong but it seems that as long as recent programs is selected, you can actually turn the others off again.”

    Thanks to @paridkushta for finding the pattern and publishing to @gabeaul via twitter.

    This worked immediately for me. I didn’t even need to restart. I hope it helps you guys…I’ve been working on this for weeks.

    • Nope this isn’t the same as crashed Windows Explorer. Still, thanks for adding in. Maybe somebody would be lucky to fix it this way.

  • Worked for me…
    Right click on start menu and run cmd as admin
    Then type powershell and press enter … this will start the powershell in admin mode.

    then paste the command mentioned in this thread.
    Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register “$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml”}

  • I install window 10 on my pc but it give error , like WINDOW IS NOT REGISTERD what is the solution

    • That’s great. maybe I should remove the mention of build in the post. Seems to be working for all builds so far. Sad that MS hasn’t fixed it yet.

  • Press
    Win+R
    In the box type
    msconfig

    Select ” selective startup”
    Then reboot

    It worked in my laptop.

  • its not working on my laptop here….cant even load a web page even im connected!!
    without the start menu i cant do a clean install!
    wanted to do recovery setting…but i gt no history there…why?

  • Thank you so much took about 2 mins and works perfectly. I agree with others it may be a little slower but i have had this problem for weeks and im just glad it works now! ๐Ÿ˜€

  • I did as indicated … wonderful, start menu runs now again (perhaps a bit slowerly than before ?) … thanks to the author for this useful help !

      • the problem is…i cant even access the PC setting…how do i get a clean install without using the start menu ?

        • Better do it using a DVD or USB drive, because the Refresh function of Windows isn’t really as good as clean install from an installation media.

            • You can download it from Microsoft website and yes you will be needed to have a Product/License Key which I cannot provide as it is unique to every customer.

              • tried….cant intall it..it said that the product key cant be use…coz my laptop had originally came with window 8 since the day i purchase this notebook.. (they called it OEM…am i right?)

                i even try to bring my laptop to the computer repair shop
                he said that my system had deleted the previous window 8, so even i do system recovery nothing will change

                • You then need to install Windows 8 back and use the product key that is printed on the sticker at the back of laptop.

                  • To add to this discussion.

                    Win 8 keys were built into the BIOS settings on some models. I’m not sure if you can see the key by going in to system settings (BIOS) but it may be worth a shot.

  • It worked!!! Thank you!!! Now I can actually use it till the final release comes out. Thank you for saving me a ton of time!!!

  • why does it take so long to process? i have a 20gb ram pc and 3.5ghz processor? not used to this slowness

  • Build 10074
    above command executed, Still not working, I noticed there is a delay for a minute or 2 for opening apps Why?
    anyone noticed it ?

  • Not gonna lie. This worked for what I needed it to do but now my Start menu will just randomly open by itself. Not really a big deal but can annoyingly get in the way of things at the worse times. Is there a way around this issue???

    Thanks anyways if not. Much appreciated if someone could provide a solution.

    • That’s strange and you’re the only one to report this. Did you try a restart? And are you sure you’re not hitting up the Windows key by mistake (sorry if this feels harsh, not intended)?

      • No no that’s okay. I work comm so I can understand where the mindset comes from. This is an on going problem that has occurred since I used this fix about a month ago maybe less. So I’ve gone through updates/upgrades/power cycles since then and it just kind of sticks with the laptop. As for accidentally hitting it well maybe if I’m playing a game but I’ve been clear across the room and it still happens to just pops open.

        • Ah that’s sad. Possible misconfiguration at some point. Maybe you should live with it for some more time and do a clean install when Windows 10 finally comes out for consumers?

  • Is it possible to upgrade to a newer build without completely reinstalling? Anyone know if the updates do this?

  • Found the solution that worked for me – very easy.

    “I had this problem after I clean installed 10130. Every time start menu refused to show up, I’d go into settings, personalization->start and toggle some settings on or off like show recently added/most used etc. and that would fix it, start menu and all other fly out menus would start to work again. The problem hasn’t occurred again after I went through this process a few times when fly outs including start refused to pop up.”

    Original link:
    https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/001ea94f-5fce-46e5-97f6-39886cf206d0/glitch-in-windows-10-about-start-menu-when-it-will-not-show?forum=WinPreview2014General

  • tons of errors generated when this command was run on my computer. but ultimaltely did what it is suppose to do! Good job man!!!

  • Thanks, worked on build 10122. But icon size is still oversized om snall tiles. But at least the start menu works again! =)

  • Worked for me : Right click on icon, then run windows PowerShell ISE as administrator. Make sure you click the ISE one. Copy the command and wait around a minute and your start button will work again ๐Ÿ™‚

    • I had this problem after I clean installed 10130. I’d go into settings, personalization->start and toggle some settings on or off like show recently added/most used etc. and that would fix it, start menu and all other fly out menus would start to work again. The problem hasn’t occurred again after I went through this process a few times when fly outs including start refused to pop up.

  • It worked!! I recover back from build 10030, which works awful to 10022 and start menu got deacctivated. ypur script make it work again
    thanks a lot

  • @Carl, you can enter a command in powershell to enter the administrator mode first, instead of step 3 mentioned by Arjun Kumar.

    Start-Process powershell -Verb runas

    Btw. for me this did the trick, it works again..

  • I thought this might be the trick that gives me back the start button. But I can’t seem to get PowerShell to run as administrator. The option does not appear to Run As Administrator when I right-click on it. Going to the Source link to see if I can figure it out. Thanks for this post.

      • guest, Look, we all have to learn things. That feature, the “run as administrator” doesn’t exist on my Windows 7 Pro computers, which we are migrating from.

        Stop being a know-it-all jerk!

        • Agreed! Nobody is born with all the info inherited. When you need something you explore and you learn.
          It was only 2015 that one of my friend got to know that blocks of text in MS Word can be selected together and be changed from Lowercase to Uppercase and vice-versa.

          BTW sorry wasn’t able to reply to your original comment. Did you manage to make it work already?

      • Hi!pls help me.do you know what to do if my Windows 10 (idunno what build number) suddenly sign out and then wont open anymore.it was just put to sleep and then cant click.even the keybard shortcuts like ctrl+alt+del are not working..what to do?pls do help me.pls!thank u.i’ll wait for ur response.

    • press windows key + x and then look for search. From there search for powershell, then right click on it run as administration

  • sir i have installed windows 10 home insider preview build 10074;
    sir it has no any start menu .
    and windows key is not working at all’

    i have did whatever you suggested above

    1.Press Windows Key + R on your keyboard.
    2.Key in PowerShell and hit Enter.
    3.Right click on the PowerShell icon on the taskbar and select Run as Administrator.
    4.Now paste the following command in the Administrator: Windows PowerShell window and press Enter key:
    Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register “$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml”}
    Wait for PowerShell to execute and complete the command. Ignore the few errors (in red color) that may pop up.

    but still have the same problem.
    please help..

  • How do reverse this action? power shell is taking too much ram memory now

    ShellExperienceHost 4,756.4 MB

  • Thank God, you saved my night lol. It Worked! Note: I’m on build 10130. Had issues with ethernet driver and then start menu. Man, 10122 worked fine for me and then everything went bad.

    • worked for me also on 10130 build but had to pin powershell to taskbar from c: drive location or u wont be able to open powershell as admin from command prompt

  • Hi,
    Thank you very much. Provided solution worked for me. Initially I got following error.

    error:
    ——-
    “Get-AppXPackage : The trust relationship between this workstation and the primary domain failed. (Exception from HRESULT:0x800706FD)
    At line:1 char:1
    + Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppXPackage -DisableDevelopm …
    + ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo : NotSpecified: (:) [Get-AppxPackage], COMException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException,Microsoft.Windows.Appx.PackageManager.Commands.GetAp
    pxPackageCommand”

    Then I changed command and instead of “-AllUsers” is used “-user ” then it worked for me.

  • Worked well for me. Updated to build 130 and rolled back to 122 then shit hit the fan. Fix restored functionality of Start Menu and Search.

  • Worked for me on 10074 after a system restore broke my start menu.

    HOWEVER: Windows-R didn’t start PowerShell as an Admin, so my initial attempt failed, citing access denied.

    I clicked Browse, then searched for powershell, then right-clicked the exe and Run As Admin’ed it. Then the fix command ran successfully.

    I also quit explorer.exe from the Task Manager before running the repair, to make sure there was clean access to all the system files.

  • Tried powershell fix but did not work in build 10122. Then I right-clicked on desktop, chose Personalize, clicked Start tab, then turned off “Use full-screen Start when in the desktop”. This seemed to fix the issue and the Continuum start menu reappeared. Guessing that the build 10122 update added this feature or set the feature incorrectly on my desktop computer.

  • Had this problem in build 10074 and thought its some program am running causing this.
    happy its solved now

  • Thanks so much for posting this. It worked for me. I’m glad to know it wasn’t just me, I’ve had this since this problem since the previous build (don’t recall the number) and it still occurs on build 10122, but this fixed it.

  • I have updated to 10122 and start bar didn’t work so I restored to 10074 and start still didn’t work (before update it work fine)! This fix solve the problem! Thank You!!! Now I have to update it again:-(

  • Ok tried this twice (install) and the start menu just quit. BEFORE I did the above through powershell I
    clicked the link “How to Enable or Disable Start Menu in Windows 10 ” and TURNED those two OFF and for me the start menu works again ..didnt have to use powershell this time as I did on the 1st install.. something to look into

    • Thanks bud!
      Had same problem and this worked for me.
      Windows 10 Pro Insider Preview
      Evaluation copy
      Build 10074

      • Still having issues with wireless adapter disappearing. changed PCI slot, bit more troubleshooting, starting working, can’t confirm is hardware or software.

        • I had 10122 besides killing my start menu ( which this fixed, thank you!) I had it corrupt my communication “stack” file, which prevented me from getting on the web at all. I had to go and track down a hack to rebuild the stack and since then, all is well with my web access.

  • Worked EXACTLY as described. Rolled back to 10047 from 10122 due to Spartan trouble and other issues. This fix is perfect!! Thanks for the excellent direction. Note to other users: Be patient as the PowerShell executes, it can take a while to complete.

  • If you can’t run Powershell directly as an administrator like it was for me, you’ll have to find the program by yourself in windows explorer to run it as an admin (right click on the file). Here’s the path: “C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0” (if C:\ is your partition installation Windows)

    • Are you running PowerShell as Admin? If so, there might be something else which can’t be fixed this way.

  • Is there any other way to fix this crap of an O.S, the above fix didn’t work for me, I think it is a registry error…build 10074

  • It didn’t happen until I had to rollback from 10122. That build killed my network connections!

    • Same here. The most frustrating thing is that the only way roll back to previous Windows version is to go to Settings screen which is only accessible from Start menu.

    • Hey Steve
      That’s wonderful. Never did I know that this post is gonna help so many users even those going past the build 9926. Keep enjoying!

  • Worked perfectly on 10122! Even let me start adding icons again! Thank you, to the genius that wrote this article!

  • after some troublesome weeks with my pc this finaly saved me from reinstalling all the crap again =)
    nothing helped, no sfc/scannow, no DISM,
    thank you so much!

    (happened when I went back from build10122 to build10074 cuz its causing VCOMP110.dll errors)

  • Worked perfectly. The start menu didn’t appear immediately after the first couple clicks but it popped up soon after. And my “Pin to Start Menu” icons are actually there now! Awesome!

    Currently on Build 10074 because I rolled back from 10122. The rollback caused this issue in the first place :/

    • At first I’m also confused
      – after pressing powershell in run then new window will come just don’t copy/paste that command there
      -right click one the powershell option which already in task-bar
      – then click run as administrator
      -that window you must paste it and then, it will work after finishing the process

  • Your method worked perfectly for me. Thank you very much indeed. Fortunately in this day and age there are people like yourself who are first of all knowledgeable and secondly interested in sharing what they know–like the best of the hippy period. Cheers

  • Best thread on this, found only way to fix but leave apps and docs intact was just download the 10074 ISO, burn it to whatever media and run setup.exe within windows 10. Most times when the Start menu fails seems to be old programs that mess with high video DPI settings

  • please help me guys…none of the above listed solutions worked for me..my start button in still not working..:/

  • none of these fix works for me guys.
    I’m on Windows 10 home insider preview build 10074
    my start menu or windows key/button is still not functioning any other solution for this?
    I’ve got the update through windows update.. I’m still hoping for a solution for this before a clean install using iso. ๐Ÿ™

  • Hi. my nokia lumia 1520 is crashed after updating to technical preview of windows 10. Main screen doesn’t come up only..Whatz the other option. Pls update.It’s 48 hours now….

    • USe the Windows Phone Recovery Tool to downgrade your phone back to Windows 8.1 ๐Ÿ™‚

  • i have a windows 10 home insider preview. these steps didn’t fix mine. and my problem is every default icons on taskbar are not working( functioning but cant click , e.i. volume, action center, battery, network and specially the windows button.
    right click option only works : (
    hope thtere is a fix for these. thanks alot.

    • same here mate except mine control panel looks like windows 7 and cannot open start menu except from other offlineaccount which i dont wanna use…

  • Hi guys im having a problem with running x86 apps on Build 10074, managed to get the start menu, notifications and search to work in a way but the menu only works for a few seconds at a time.
    I cant launch PowerShell as admin but able to work around it using Command Prompt as admin and then typing in PowerShell.

    My settings app is not working so im unable to access my windows update and recovery, meaning im stuck with 10074, i was forced to restart my laptop and then i got a broken windows 10.

    What i have tried already:

    Get-AppxPackage | % { Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -ForceApplicationShutdown -Register ($_.InstallLocation + โ€œ\AppxManifest.xmlโ€) }

    And then i tried

    Get-ChildItem $env:windir\SystemApps\ -Name โ€œAppxManifest.xmlโ€ -Recurse | % { Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -ForceApplicationShutdown -Register ($env:windir + โ€œ\SystemApps\โ€ + $_) }

    Also creating a new DWORD (32-bit) value, call it โ€œEnableXamlStartMenuโ€

    Every time i restart Windows Explorer or turn on tablet mode and then off again the search and start menu pops up and the aspect ratio is out.

    I also get windows explorer errors when i try to open x86 apps and some apps in control panel.

    Can someone please help me fix this, my main concern at this stage will be to get x86 apps to work.

    Thanks in advance.

  • HI what you need to do, is not click run as admin, click run ISE as Administrator. That is what worked for me, and now everything is working ok again. ๐Ÿ˜‰

  • Thanks!! it worked for me (windows 10 build 10074). I had used system restore due to a serious conflict with my Killer Wireless Manager, so this solution was exactly what my rig needed. Thanks again. JS

  • I had to log in under a different account (I used Administrator) and delete the Packages and TileDataLayer folders from C:\Users\Joshua\AppData\Local and then re-register all my apps from powershell.

    You can also use Win+X then press A and you will get an elevated cmd window. Then just type powershell and press enter, and you will be in an elevated powershell.

    Get-AppxPackage | % { Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -ForceApplicationShutdown -Register ($_.InstallLocation + “\AppxManifest.xml”) }

    If that doesn’t fix it, you can also try this:

    Get-ChildItem $env:windir\SystemApps\ -Name “AppxManifest.xml” -Recurse | % { Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -ForceApplicationShutdown -Register ($env:windir + “\SystemApps\” + $_) }

    • Excellent thank you! (And the others.) This seems to be the definitive solution hopefully. Hopefully Microsoft adds a way to detect the Start Menu failed and do this for the user (and restore the default pinned stuff that seems to go away after doing this).

  • It worked for me, windows 10 build 10074). Hardest part was locating where to “run as admin”.

  • GUYS !! try opening the tablet mode (BUILD 10074 ONLY i think) ad then thre hitting the star menu slightly rapidly that should open if not well i dont know but if it opens dont close it then try to off the tablet mode and it shoulb be open SOMETIMES ..

  • Build 10074. I caused the problem by running System Restore. Your solution worked for me; Start Menu is back. Thanks!

  • ‘Get-AppXPackage’ is not recognized as an internal or external command,
    operable program or batch file.

  • Same here. Ever since installing Build 10074. I have noticed that the start menu works for about 30 seconds after signing in. After about 30 seconds (sometimes less) of signing in, ShellExperienceHost.exe crashes, after which, nothing works.

    • Update: It seems a combination of things fixed this for me on Build 10074. I tried Robert Valentine’s Solution above, but it didn’t work right away. I then ran the Fix from the original post a couple times (I ran “Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register “$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml”}” from Admin Powershell two times in a row without rebooting in between.) After running the powershell command twice, I rebooted and viola working start menu and search.

      • Nevermind. ShellExperienceHost.exe crashed after a few minutes and now no more start menu or search.

  • Mine still doesn’t work. I`ve tried every possible solution and my startmenu and my notification bar are still dead =(

    Sorry about the bad English. If someone could help I would appreciate very much.

  • Hi,

    I faced a similar issue! The following worked for me

    1 Right click on the Start Button and select “Run”
    2 Type “regedit”
    3 Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER>Software>Microsoft>Windows>CurrentVersion>Explorer>Advance
    4 Create a new DWORD (32-bit) value, call it “EnableXamlStartMenu”
    5 Restart Explorerโ€‹ from task manager.

    • thanks!! it worked for me (windows 10 build 10074). but which one, i am not sure ๐Ÿ˜› initially i tried the fix given by “Arasan” and then i tried the fix from the original post and voila it worked for me, and yes there is no need to restart the system…if it’s not working try once restarting the system.

      Please try to avoid restore the system if u are running win 10 previews coz all of your windows apps will crash and you may have to reinstall the OS.

  • Okay, so after 3 days of trying to figure this shit out, I found that the tiledatamodelsvc is trying to run off a folder in your AppData.
    Go to C:/Users/name/AppData/Local/ and delete the TileDataLayer folder. Should fix everything immediately, no reboot necessary. Let me know how it works for you, it did for me!

  • This didn’t work for me. Instead if you go into Task Manager then the Details tab, find Explorer.exe and End Task then go to File > New Task then type Explorer it reboots the process and frees the start menu back up.

    • In that case, even a proper restart should’ve fixed it for you. But thanks still for the comment. Will help somebody ๐Ÿ™‚

    • I had the same problem on 1074 i ran update from cmd and it fixed it

      %windir%\system32\wuapp.exe startmenu

      • Not sure what you mean, tried running with raw text, tried using start, no avail. Explain more. I’m having issues opening all metro apps, cannot right click in explorer or it crashes, and I cannot get to any settings pertaining to the new apps.

  • I’ve lost hours of working because of this start button problem. I searched and searched finally found this solution. It was not right away though. I could not figure it out how to get powershell and run it as administrator.
    So here I will try to make it easier/clearer, hopefully.
    1. Open: Control Panel
    2. Klick: Administrative Tools
    3. See on the bottom , in my laptop (Yoga2Pro) there are 3 kind of Powershell, chose and right click the : Windows Powershell ISE, run pick ” run as administrator
    4. You will see new window, called : Adminsitrator: Windows Powershell ISE
    5. Then copy paste this: Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register “$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml”}
    6. Klick : Enter
    7. Wait , until the magic stop running.
    8. When it’s done , pray and klick start, if not working for the first time, try it again klicking the “start”
    9. It worked on my laptop, good luck

  • It doesnt work on my build 10041 version after some command ….some red errors pop up in powershell..plz help man

    • Not sure as this was specific to build 9926. I no longer use Preview and hence unfortunately cannot quote a working solution. Sorry ๐Ÿ™

  • Perfect. After hours of frustration it worked a treat wish I’d googled it earlier.
    Thanks

  • Thank you Author for the detailed steps , a little correction

    From
    Press CTRL + R on your keyboard.

    To
    Press “Windows Key” + R on your keyboard

  • This particular fix didn’t work for me but I figured I might as well post what did fix it for me.

    In the registry at “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced” there is a DWORD called EnableStartMenu, that had somehow been set to 0 for me… No idea how, I ran windows update and the start menu just disappeared. Anyway, I set it to one and the Start Menu is back.

    So there you go, another fix to try.

    • Hmm.. In your case was it just limited to the Start Menu or Cortana and even other metro apps? Makes sense if it was just the start menu ๐Ÿ™‚

      • Cortana might have been affected, have search set to only show up when I open the start menu so not sure. Metro apps and so on worked though.

  • Hello sir
    I purchased nokia lumia 730 before 10 days. Very Next day I am facing Network connectivity problem. In this problem i am telling complete condition of phone:-
    1. Sim network is showing .
    2. Data connection option in setting is not shows.
    3. If i make a new call than call can not connect and also cannot cut the call by end button. (only seeing dailing on screen)
    4. If i call on my number by another phone its showing switch off.
    ***5. This problem is from second day of purchase so I go to nokia care. There they complete format and update phone software but same problem again from next day.
    *****(I have also checked by change new sim but same problem)
    Well this is embarrassing Please slove my problem immediately.
    Thank You

    • You need to contact Nokia Care only as they have the technical knowledge to loot after such issues. You might be needed to replace your SIM card though if it is pretty old or excessively scratched.

    • works fix

      Go to Registry Editor
      Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER>Software>Microsoft>Windows>CurrentVersion>Explorer>Advanced
      You need to create a DWORD value with the name โ€˜EnableXamlStartMenuโ€™ and value as โ€˜0โ€™.
      restart explorer and restart PC

  • Get-AppXPackage : The package repository is corrupted.
    The package repository is corrupted.
    At line:1 char:1
    + Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopm …
    + ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo : NotSpecified: (:) [Get-AppxPackage], Exception
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : System.Exception,Microsoft.Windows.Appx.PackageManager.Commands.GetAppxPackageCommand

  • Thanks for ending 3 hours of frustration. Really, how often does a clean fix like this come along…Thank you again

    • While posting this, I thought I’d probably be the only one facing this. But here we go ๐Ÿ˜›
      MS should really start offering better builds, nomatter if it is just a Technical Preview. Should be usable at least.