My Windows 10 Start Menu is broken

I must say that I am a big fan of Windows 10. After all the trouble we had with Windows 8 and Windows 8.1. Microsoft have made a fast, responsive operating system that took the best from Windows 7 and Windows 8 and combined that in Windows 10.Win10_Start_Menu

However, one issue seems to have troubled a lot of users all over the world. That issue is a broken Start Menu/Start button that many users has experienced. When that happens you are really stuck. You can’t enter settings, you can’t search and the action center is not working either. Not sure why Microsoft has designed it in a way that it all will break down in case of an issue.

In this post I will try to explain why this issue happens in the first place and give you some tips how to recover from this issue.

Why does Windows 10 Start Menu breaks?

Well, most of the times it has something to do with apps. I know it might seem odd, but whenever you bring up the start menu in Windows 10, all the apps are also initialized. The thing is that if there is issue with an app every thing about the start menu breaks. It is not the best way Microsoft has handled that, but that is what happens.

How can I recover my broken Windows 10 Start Menu?

I have seen many suggestions to that questions on the Internet. Some has been working and other have not. I guess there is no simple answer to that question, but I will try to give you some of the best solutions to this issue and then you will have to try it out on your own.

Solution 1

Try and run the System File checker. It can be started from an elevated command prompt. You can start a command prompt via the Task manager, if that is the only access you have. When it has completed restart your computer and see if it has resolved the issue.

sfc /scannow

When it has completed restart your computer and see if it has resolved the issue.

Solution 2

Repair your Windows installation using Dism command line tool from an elevated command prompt:

Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

When it has completed restart your computer and see if it has resolved the issue.

Solution 3

Open an elevated PowerShell window and run the following command:

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

When it has completed restart your computer and see if it has resolved the issue.

Solution 4

If all the above solutions fails, you might need to create a new user and move your data to your new user profile. From an elevated command prompt type:

net user username /add

Replace username with the name you want for your new user. Must not exist on computer already.

To sum things up

I hope one of the above solution helped you resolving your problem with the start menu/start button. I know a lot of users have had this problem and so had I myself. I wonder why Microsoft has not been doing a bigger effort to help solving this issue. When you can access start button, start menu and search not much is working. In my opinion this is one of the only really big bugs in Windows 10. I would say that it must be possible to error handle this in a better way than Microsoft has done in Windows 10. What do you think about this issue? Please drop me a comment below.

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18 Thoughts to “My Windows 10 Start Menu is broken”

  1. I’ve had this happen on my PC, twice! I went through the internet looking for ways to fix it and tried all of these and sadly nothing worked. I ended up doing a restore to a few days before for everything to start working again.

    Hopefully Microsoft will sort out this major bug and put out a patch (that works) for it.

    1. Hi Karen

      I agree it is a pretty big bug that many users of Windows 10 has experienced. Microsoft should come with some kind of solution to this. Good that you had a backup you could roll back to.

      1. I Make sure that I have at least two days before to fall back with Thomas, since upgrading from Windows 7 to 10 there have been a stack of problems!

  2. hi thomas, do you know were i can download full drivers pack for windows 10? seems like not all drivers on my win10 is functioning properly

    1. You need drivers that match your hardware. You will have to download the drivers from the hardware vendor of your computer to make it work.

  3. That is good to know. I did not run into this yet but I am ususally a magnet for all kind of bugs 😉 I used to be a SW tester and had quite a talent for digging up bugs.

    1. Hi Stefan
      Most of the times it is not an issue, but a lot of Windows 10 users has seen all kind of problems with this. I have also seen it a couple of times myself.

  4. Recently i have upgraded to windows 10 from windows 8..initial one month it was really great but now the windows 10 is running very slowly on my PC..My PC is taking more time to load the operating system..One more problem which i have is start menu is not opening on click it..I don’t know why ? Will try the above given solutions to fix my issue..thanks for sharing

  5. Sourav

    After upgrading to windows 10 from windows 7 home basic, my PC becomes very slow and sometimes the start menu stops functioning.Should I go back to windows 7 or windows 8? Is this solution you provided here works for my PC too?

    1. Hi
      Within the first 30 days after upgrading you can rollback to Windows 7 if you want to. If your computer is a bit old you could also consider to upgrade it with an SSD drive. It can really do a big difference to an older computer. See more here: https://techthatworks.net/hardware/are-ssd-solid-state-drive-really-worth-the-extra-money SSD are not that expensive anymore and that might be just what your Windows 10 installation need.

  6. I had some problem with my windows but SFC /Scannow make everything working fine and thank you for this post I will bookmark this post for future use if I got some error …

  7. I was facing the same problem but restored it before trying anything.

  8. I’ve had this happen on my PC, twice! I went through the internet looking for ways to fix it and tried all of these and sadly nothing worked. I ended up doing a restore to a few days before for everything to start working again. But now i have installed windows 7 on my PC!

  9. thanks for sharing this. am a big fan of windows 10 and i haven’t experienced such breakdown but if it does i now know how to fix it

  10. just from concern would you advice big organizations to upgrade to windows 10?..let say for those which use the active directory would it still work?

    1. Yes for sure. We use it at the company where I work and it is a great operating system.

  11. I had the same problem with Windows 10 and finally i solved it thanks

  12. This worked for me, I applied Solution 2 and I have everything sorted out. Thanks

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