Non-Functioning Start Menu / Missing taskbar Icons

I seem to remember running across a post here regarding the problem with a non-functioning Start Menu button and missing or non-functioning taskbar icons that indicated this issue had been fixed in the Anniversary Update. Well I don't think so. I was playing with a brand new laptop on which I had set up three users and have the latest Windows 10 build installed. I was switching between users ("Signing-off" one and logging into another) trying to verify what settings were enabled and changing them if needed. I was on one user for maybe five minutes and had changed some settings. I logged off that user and then logged on to another. The desktop took a little longer than normal to start up (bad sign!). When it came up, the Start Menu button did not work if I left-clicked it (right-click did work) and no icons appeared on the taskbar. I restarted the system and logged in again. This time the desktop came up correctly. So this issue still exists. Whether it is still doing things in the background when I sign out and gets messed up somehow, I don't know but it has been an issue since day 1.

JohnD

I have just googled this same issue, it appears to have something to do with explorer.exe, if you restart it it seems to resolve this issue for now however I have yet to find a more permanent solution.

In looking at the Reliability Monitor, there may have been some app updates happening around that time. Possibly this may have caused the problem. The Event Logs has several 30000 millisecond timeouts waiting for a response from the BrokerInfrastructure service at that time. I have had this happen on several systems. I was able to recover by various methods all related to shutting down or restarting. Restarting into Safe Mode and then restarting back into normal mode has worked a few times.

JohnD