I thought Windows 10 was a great operating system until it started throwing some errors. Last week, the start menu in my laptop stopped working, and I had a hard time in finding the applications whose shortcuts were not there on the desktop. Basic applications like paint, task manager, power shell were taking a lot of time to startup.
Along with the start menu, I was not able to create a new user in Win 10. In Windows 8, you have to access a separate window to access and run installed apps. This feature is not available in Win 10 as the new Microsoft OS ships with the start button.
This button is important as it allows to run most used and recently installed apps quickly. It can be a headache for the users if Windows 10 start menu stops working unexpectedly.
Fixing this problem was a difficult task for me. Before getting this button to work again, I followed many solutions shared on popular blogs and websites.
I had created a restore point immediately after installing Win 10 and restoring it didn’t work. Some Microsoft MVPs recommended users who faced these problems to run some command in PowerShell as administrator.
Unfortunately, this didn’t work for me either. I executed a command to check file systems and repaired windows image too. But these solutions failed to fix the problem. Killing and starting the explorer.exe process was not a solution either.
So then what is the fix to the above-stated problems?
You’ll have to reset Win 10. Doing this will remove all the apps you’ve installed, but your file data and location will remain unchanged. Running this tool is the only working solution for Window 10 start menu not working problem as it will replace your old settings and corrupt system files with the new files. Here’s the procedure to reset the operating system.
- Enter Recovery options in the search box (besides the start menu)
- A new Windows will appear on your screen. Click on getting started button below reset this PC option.
- Now select keep my files option.
- Windows 10 will not start replacing system data but your files will remain intact. Depending the configuration of your computer, it may take 1 to 2 hours for this entire task to complete.
Engineers working on the Windows 10 OS might be well aware of the issues mentioned above. I hope they’re working on a solution on it. If your computer’s Windows 10 start menu won’t open, instead of wasting time in running scripts and commands in command prompt/power shell, I would suggest you to reset the OS. This is a working solution, and you should try it out.
