Windows 10 start menu not working

Question

Firstly, I am aware of this question possibly being duplicate of Windows 10 Start Button Repeatedly Becomes Non-Responsive

and

Windows 10 Start Menu Stops Working.

The second links says

Try running CMD as Admin, typing powershell, and entering this command: Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml"}

Taken from: http://forums.windowscentral.com/ask-question/370916-start-menu-not-working-windows-10-build-10240-a.html

However, I am not sure about the 'DevelopmentMode'. This is not a pre-release version. I recently upgraded from Windows 8.1 to 10 and initially start menu and taskbar right-click were working fine. Couple of days ago the problem surfaced. Is there any new solution to this problem?

Till now, I performed update and SFC /scannow but no luck.

Answer 1

My company uses Windows 10 Enterprise and the following resolved the issue for me.

• Run Powershell as an admin administrator.

• Reinstall the Windows apps using the following command:

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

Answer 2

I spent ages going through all the solutions I saw online but none of them worked for me (including a full windows reset!). You should try those first though before resorting to this.

So the actual fix for this for me was removing all windows updates from the machine. After doing this the start menu was working again. I then updated windows back to the latest and it continued to work.
Control Panel -> Programs and Features -> View installed updates

Find all KB updates that have uninstall options and uninstall them.

After doing this I had some ongoing issues with cortana/search which just needed that powershell command run to reinstall the windows apps and then everything worked again.
Get-AppXPackage | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml"}

There's a tool microsoft released called the Microsoft Start Menu Troubleshooter that might also help with this but it didn't do anything for me unfortunately: https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/microsofts_start_menu_troubleshooter.html

Answer 3

The solution that worked for me:

1. Sign out of the account that is having issues
2. Sign into a different admin account
3. Delete the following file:
   C:\Users\<account_with_issues>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\usrclass.dat

Answer 4

The only options that work for me:

1. Reboot the machine. (Ctrl+Alt+Del)
2. Install Classic Shell. (Freeware that replaces your Start menu with a remade older version.)
3. Switch to Linux if that supports your hard- and software. (Xubuntu works fine on hardware from 2008, and Linux Mint is popular now.)