Newly upgraded windows 10 Home laptop start menu not working

teke0884 · 30 Nov 2015

I have recently (read: yesterday) installed windows 10 home on my formerly windows 8 laptop, and have run into 2 major issues: i cannot get the start menu to come up, and I cannot use cortana/the search bar. I click on them, nothing happens. I hit the windows key on my keyboard, nothing. I tried to search for updates, but I don't know how without the start menu! I am becoming frustrated very quickly, as I have had to use command prompt (I suppose it works, but it is nonetheless irritating) to shut down or restart any time I have had to.

Night Hawk · 01 Dec 2015

Hello teke0884 Welcome to the Ten Forums!

There's a very simple solution to solve "Upgrade Buggyness"! It's called a Clean Install and with Windows 10 now expecting upgrade installs and this being the first time with 10 you may want to go one step further! How to Directly Clean Install Windows 10 without having to Upgrade First

The guide there will take you through each step of the clean install preparation unless you are unable to restore Windows 8 where you would see the GenuineTicket.xml file created, saved to a flash drive or other place for safe keeping, and then place on the fresh 10 install which normally comes out bug free! If 10 is already activated at the present moment then no worry for seeing the Buggy upgrade removed and replaced by a full clean install which is the usual need for laptops!

Now there is one other option if you are worried any about losing files while the recommendation here is to plan for a complete wipe of the drive. And you might want the possible consideration of removing the OEM factory partitions as well ahead of time using an alternate drive partitioning program if you wish to avoid seeing the System Reserved partition created. I ended up doing that on one laptop here which was a single drive only type when deciding to create a second backup partition and the OEM primary could not be resized since it was cemented inplace! Good Bye OEM primary in a fast hurry! But that would also mean no turning back to the previous version unless you have the 8 media.

With the first upgrade install here once the storage drives were unplugged on the first of two desktops set up actually with dual boots of 10 with 7 the BUggy upgrade was even worse off and saw an Upgrade to Repair type install being the second upgrade over the first to fix things. Repair Install Windows 10 with an In-place Upgrade - Windows 10 Forums

For the second desktop on the other hand the upgrade went smooth as silk for some strange reason while the main build had just seen a temp install of 7 totally fresh with SP1 go to upgrade over that and still ended up with bug! On the laptop however not only was the Start button missing but forget about getting into the AllApps! No worry however since the immediate clean install of the 32bit 10 Home there to replace the factory 32bit 7 Home Premium was expected! The second clean install once the first was found activated made the change over to the 64bit 10 Home followed by finding the OEM primary had to go with the last 64bit 10 Home install going on. Got busy there for a bit!