Windows 10 Start Menu and Search not working.

jacobston · 02-28-16, 01:45 PM

Friday evening I booted up my computer, but I noticed that none of the tray icons were loading at the bottom right of the taskbar, and no other applications' icons were loaded either. Clicking and right-clicking on the windows icon, notification icon and search icon all does absolutely nothing. The computer was working Friday afternoon without any issues, and now everything except the taskbar is working without issue.

So far, I have tried googling a solution, but none I have found have worked so far. I have rebooted several times using the button on the front of the computer, I restarted explorer.exe, I tried running the system file checker and repairing the windows image from the command prompt, and I tried rebooting some more but I still have the same problem.

If anyone knows of anything else I can try, it would be much appreciated. I would rather not have to completely reinstall windows to fix this, but if I have to I still have my old Windows 8.1 product key.

EDIT: here is a screenshot of the issue.

EDIT2: I forgot to mention, when I looked in the task manager, I noticed the Cortana process was not listed where it was been in the past. It is also worth noting that I can get into the classic control panel through the task manager, but cannot figure out how to get into the win 10 settings as I normally would.

EDIT3: The start menu seems to be working again, for now. I tried to enter the bios to boot in safe mode. I wasn't able to do so, however, as I accidentally hit escape and setup resumed normally. When I made it to my desktop, everything seemed to load normally.

02-28-16, 01:45 PM	#1
jacobston Watch Officer Join Date: Aug 2013 Location: ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha Posts: 338 Downloads: 24 Uploads: 0	Windows 10 Start Menu and Search not working. Friday evening I booted up my computer, but I noticed that none of the tray icons were loading at the bottom right of the taskbar, and no other applications' icons were loaded either. Clicking and right-clicking on the windows icon, notification icon and search icon all does absolutely nothing. The computer was working Friday afternoon without any issues, and now everything except the taskbar is working without issue. So far, I have tried googling a solution, but none I have found have worked so far. I have rebooted several times using the button on the front of the computer, I restarted explorer.exe, I tried running the system file checker and repairing the windows image from the command prompt, and I tried rebooting some more but I still have the same problem. If anyone knows of anything else I can try, it would be much appreciated. I would rather not have to completely reinstall windows to fix this, but if I have to I still have my old Windows 8.1 product key. EDIT: here is a screenshot of the issue. EDIT2: I forgot to mention, when I looked in the task manager, I noticed the Cortana process was not listed where it was been in the past. It is also worth noting that I can get into the classic control panel through the task manager, but cannot figure out how to get into the win 10 settings as I normally would. EDIT3: The start menu seems to be working again, for now. I tried to enter the bios to boot in safe mode. I wasn't able to do so, however, as I accidentally hit escape and setup resumed normally. When I made it to my desktop, everything seemed to load normally. Last edited by jacobston; 02-28-16 at 08:05 PM.