WIndows 10 fix Start button not working

Galdorf

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Ontario, Canada
  1. Open Windows PowerShell as Administrator
    1. Right click Start button
    2. Choose Command prompt (Admin)
    3. Type in Powershell in the black window and hit Enter
  2. Paste in the Windows PowerShell window and press Enter key:
    Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml"}
 
Most of the windows 7 to 10 updates all end up with this problem even on my personal machine looks like only nuke and pave works upgrade is too buggy.
 
I keep getting this every few days. I'm trialling it on a spare laptop so it's not in everyday use. I suspect it may have something to do with suspend/resume.

Seems like a few people have the same problem and there are a few fixes here: http://www.urtech.ca/2015/05/solved-windows-10-start-menu-and-modern-apps-do-not-function/

I'm finding that Windows is now trying to fix itself though. Yesterday it told me the start button wasn't working so it would logout and try to repair. This didn't work immediately but it worked after a proper reboot.
 
Digging up this old thread - I've seen this on two different customer computers this week. SFC fixed it on the first one ok, and no callbacks so far. The second one, though has it recurring. I've tried SFC, (fixed it for a day), running the powershell script listed above (fixed it for two days). Installing Classic Shell (fix it for 2 days). The problem keeps coming back, and this is a 3-week old new computer - not an upgrade. It's maddening. I hate to do a refresh or worse, a reset but not sure what's left.
 
I have one here. Surprise it is one of my back ups I boot once in a while to update. I figured it was time to test some solutions.

Created new user account and everything works so a Fab's transfer and I was done.
I wanted to to try to fix bad account. So I booted my parted magic disk and moved the folder from the new user account to the bad one and rebooted and it now works.

C:\Users\User name\AppData\Local\TileDataLayer
 
  1. Open Windows PowerShell as Administrator
    1. Right click Start button
    2. Choose Command prompt (Admin)
    3. Type in Powershell in the black window and hit Enter
  2. Paste in the Windows PowerShell window and press Enter key:
    Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml"}
This worked for me yesterday. The machine had AVG on it, not sure if that's related or not.
 
Just had a remote session - I had two things to try, removing IE and copying the TileDataLayer folder from a newly created user. Removing IE plus a reboot fixed the problem (...but for how long), so I didn't take the next step. If it's still working in a week, I'll call it done, but if it recurs, I'll do the TileDataLayer replacement.
 
I have noticed on some machines not sure why it won't install updates you have to manually go into updates and press the search button there are fixes to start menu in last batch of updates.
 
Well, updates were current, but it had Avast, so I uninstalled that and activated Windows Defender - Everything works.....so far. Definitely ready to be done with this one.
 
I've seen this a few times unfortunately. Systems were running Symantec so avast was not the issue in those cases. One I worked with in particular, tried various things, registry fixes, the re registering the apps etc, no joy. Did a system restore, worked for 1 week. To the day, a week later, comes back same thing. No amount of work arounds etc would fix. Finally ended up as backing up the files and nuke and pave. No issues since(knock wood)
 
I have seen it happens always on machines upgraded to Win 10 which had Windows 8 installed originally with start menu software called Poki Start Menu. Poki start menu supposed to replace "broken" Start menu (the original start menu from Win 8.0) and was commonly installed on Acer and Packard Bell computers (which is also Acer btw).

I used to fix this issue by installing Classic Start Menu (through ninite.com) but it did not solve another problem which is that Poki also broke task bar - so you could not Unpin previously pinned programs to taskbar (programs pinned after upgrade to Win 10 are OK).

I will try OP's solution next time I come across this issue.
 
Unbelievably, this machine is now on my bench again. Luckily, it seems to be fine. After the last Win10 update loaded a couple of days ago, the thing got stuck in sleep mode or something - they reported it sitting at a black screen and they couldn't do anything. They were so freaked out about all of the previous problems, they just unplugged it and brought it in. When I plugged it in, it booted fine. I checked and there were 3 more updates waiting, so I installed those without incident. I think I'll turn off sleep mode altogether to head off this type of problem in the future.

I think these folks have paid me over $200 to "fix" their new $400 computer in the last month. I tried to comp the last fix, but they insisted on paying - my kind of customer, I guess! I wish folks would quite buying from the junk end of the spectrum, but in this case, I don't think that had anything to do with it...
 
BAH! Really beginning to hate computers. So get this. This morning, computer comes in, same one as a couple months ago, Start menu won't work, critical error. :mad: I worked on this very system about 2 months ago for the exact same thing. I could not get any fixes to work then. I nuked and paved, now same exact issue is back. Going to see what luck I have renaming profiles first. Then maybe making an image of the system to keep. Why can't this be fixed for real? This is even a SURFACE PRO 3!!! The Dells etc don't seem to have this problem as much in my experience.

Also, my wife's work had their email hacked monday, yes they were using gmail old password, account hijacked, backup email and backup phone number changed, 2 step authentication enabled on them as well. She says it may be a good idea if I go out to clean it up. Computer had been running a little slowly. I get there, computer was booted, just going to do a quick cleaning, start to run things, a little slow, go to reboot in safe mode, Click, Click Click. Haven't had time to investigate, but sounds like the drive actually may have died at the time I was getting ready work on it.

On top of that, while I'm there, I get texts from my multimedia guy at church, and a call. They are at Youth Week, a special set of services this week at another church. They use a program called Easy Worship, same as we use at our church. A couple of guys love to make images on their macs, and import them into the program, which does not seem to like mac files, even jpegs. Long and short, this is someone else's computer they are monkeying with, put new backgrounds into the program, which didn't like them, in turn the backgrounds database corrupted, meaning they had no multimedia because the program kept giving errors due to the database issue.

On top of that, all my searching said the database should be in xyz profile. Nope. It was in another profile called Default_old instead of the folder named for their profile. REALLY?? I found that, renamed the backgrounds profile, so at least they can use it, they just have to import all their backgrounds back into the program. At least all their songs are there. Didn't have access to a backup. Had they made a new profile, they would not have had all their songs etc. Got home with the computer from my wife's office about 9:30 pm last night, and the other computer was dropped off closer to 10:30 by folks on their way home from the church. This whole week might as well be monday!
 
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