Start menu has disappeared, Click on button nothing happens

Hillbilly · 17 Jun 2021

Was having problems with taskbar items and played around and fixed them but yesterday found that when I click on the start button nothing happens. Dont know how long its been like that as dont use it often so maybe not my playing caused it.

Have tried to find a solution without success.

Dont want to do a reinstall unless necessary and machine has only two restore points and neither make any difference.

Any ideas please as have racked my brains but no go so far.

steve108 · 17 Jun 2021

Hello Hillbilly and welcome to TF

,

Give this a try: Re-register Start Menu in Windows 10

steve108 · 17 Jun 2021

Also run sfc per option 3: Run SFC Command in Windows 10

Hillbilly · 17 Jun 2021

Thank You but have done all that in several of the suggested ways and no different

dalchina · 18 Jun 2021

Please try (from the Tutorial section, which you're free to browse and search):
Start Menu Troubleshooter in Windows 10
Reset Start Layout in Windows 10
Restart Start Menu in Windows 10

If no luck, please create a new user for test purposes. Log in as that user, and report whether the start menu works. This is a useful diagnostic step.

If you look here e.g.

Start menu has disappeared, Click on button nothing happens-1.jpg

do you see a red message "Some settings are..."?

Dont want to do a reinstall unless necessary and machine has only two restore points and neither make any difference.

Understandable - who does. Therefore you've hopefully taken the endlessly given advice to use disk imaging routinely- so you can recover even if your disk fails. E.g. Macrium reflect (free). S Restore can't help in such cases, nor in a good many unbootable ones.

Hillbilly · 18 Jun 2021

Gave up and did a reset install. So all good now I have EaseUS software so will clone my Cdrive to a spare portable Drive I have for next time LOL

Thanks to all who tried to help I learnt a bit more.

steve108 · 18 Jun 2021

Hillbilly said:

Gave up and did a reset install. So all good now I have EaseUS software so will clone my Cdrive to a spare portable Drive I have for next time LOL

Thanks to all who tried to help I learnt a bit more.

I would have suggested Repair Install Windows 10 with an In-place Upgrade before a reset so you can keep all files and installed apps ..... try that next time

dalchina · 18 Jun 2021

I consider disk imaging better than cloning- on your backup disk you can have a series of image files e.g.

base image
differential image 1
differential image 2
differential image 3
....
differential image n

- giving you n+1 different dates to which you could restore your system.

As a differential image is the difference between 'now' and the base image, the amount of data written to the backup disk is much less than a clone would be- so the process is faster.

I have no idea if Easeus attempts to verify the integrity of the source file system, but Macrium does (CRC check) so will alert you to problems in the source.