Where did my start menu go?

Hello Riley NZL Welcome to the Ten Forums!

If you initially saw an upgrade type install from a previous version the Start button itself has been known to vanish without warning while clicking in the blank spot may still see the Start menu open right up! In other cases the Start button is right there through everything but all of a sudden you can't open up the AllApps or something else on the Start menu itself. Source? Buggy upgrade install.

The fast and easy solution? can prevent some interesting options. Since this happened right after seeing some updates go on the System Restore point the Windows update tool should have seen to could be used to roll things back a day. An older point is also an option while you then will be seeing the same updates again and may have to hide one or two! That's the Quick and Easy there.

For replacing the Start menu entirely an app called Start10 is available from Stardock while that simply offers a choice for the 7, Modern without tiles, and W10 Start menu with them as addon for a low price. But you still will want the original back in sight again before making that type of decision.

And one twist is seeing the upgrade install replaced entirely with a fresh copy of 10 going on which will clean up a list of potential problems typical of upgrade type installs where things simply don't go on as they should in many cases! You could also see a second upgrade to repair the first but that's not really a good recommendation unless there's a lot invested in keeping the present copy of 10 like softwares you can't simply replace on the spot or see reinstalled fresh again.

These are the options! Typically this was more of a problem with the July 10240 release and upgrades from that while it also depends on how long 10 has been on as well. Yet a clean install could end up being buggy in some cases as well while a bad install of an update can cause problems. The System File Checker and Disk Check tools both can be left out of this one however as those won't be any help with this. On a laptop's upgrade to 10 from 7 the button was missing but saw the Start menu open right up but you couldn't get into the AllApps previously All Programs menu! That initial upgrade was already being dumped by the time it got on anyways for a full fresh clean install which was much needed then!

OUCH! for sure! I know it can be a royal pain at times to end up needing to see "everything" put back on fresh again and why surprisingly I found that the 2010 Acronis True Image Home edition still would run normal on 10 while other softwares needed at the 2015 newer/latest version if not a beta like the first upgrade saw the beta form of the av program's 2016 release.

Now if you have 10 media by chance if not the Recovery drive made with an 8gb or larger flash drive you can also see the System Restore feature run while not even in Windows but while in the Startup recovery tools! If you can't bring up the F8 boot options menu where the recovery options are stashed booting live from either the Recovery Drive or 10 media will get you to them! Look over Option One in the guide for this. System Restore Windows 10 - Windows 10 Forums[1]=Backup%20Restore

For Option Two you wouldn't need the Start menu but the right click on Start button's right click menu there to scroll down to the actual Control Panel destination for the "While booted in Windows" type of start up for the tool. That's where you have access to the Control Panel, Run command line, Command prompt, Command prompt(admin). etc. when not able to open the Start menu for some reason as well as the option to look over the Installed updates and Updates history to find out which one put you in this mess to begin with and see that removed.

Afterwards following the uninstall you run a new check manually and watch out for the same one and right click when spotted again to choose the Hide update option. That will end up being tucked away in the Hidden updates that won''t be installed when having it set for automatic! The same is used to get rid of the 10 app or any other problematic update that comes along. I would suggest giving that a try using one of these options to avoid the last resort which hopefully will be unnecessary.

You could also try one update at a time to see if you are able to ID that one in particular and see it hidden over rolling everything back. Security updates for the 64bit Windows are something you can generally rule out. The Cumulative update for IE 11 that showed up would be out as well as for the Malicious Software Removal tool which will cut the number right down as well as any for the Net Framework 4.5. You should be able to isolate the problem much faster then risking only seeing it come back not knowing which one to watch out for!

That's one way to get thing working again! I did that with the initial 10 upgrade install here back last August during that first week 10 was out. Got things running but 10 wouldn't activate a second time due to the activation servers being bogged down big time and then a week later saw the clean install take care of that mess.

You wouldn't run into any of that now and you might still want to consider revamping the media in case of that being the source if the 10 iso didn't write fully. I've had times here where the media had to redone not for 10 but for past versions when the installation keys didn't come out right. Seeing the 10 media made up fresh again would rule that out as a source of any new problems while I suspect it was during the initial set up something didn't unpack fully as it was supposed to and why a clean install ended up seeing a familiar upgrade typical type of problem. Bad stick or bad write of Windows.iso to stick would tend to see that happen. Seen it happen enough with Linux downloads as well.