Start menu is shy; it's hiding behind the taskbar

Hi. Today, out of the blue, my start menu has started to hide behind the taskbar. It's rather annoying, as the area you type in is obscured by the taskbar now so I cannot see what is being typed:



I rebooted, no dice. Unlocked/relocked the taskbar, no dice. Moved it to the top then moved it back to the bottom, no dice. Any ideas?

I've adjusted my taskbar to look similar to yours. The text box always appears just above the taskbar as soon as I start typing, whatever height I set it to. Doesn't yours?

Can you post a screenshot of the area you type in after you've started typing? You can set a 5 second delay in the Snipping Tool to give you time to click on Start and type something before it captures it.

spunk said:

Right click the Taskbar and Unlock it. Bring your cursor to the top of the taskbar and it should turn into a double sided arrow. Drag the task bar down to the bottom so it's not as high. If this fails, then right cick and unpin a few icons from the taskbar so that it is not so high and taking up so much space.

Alas, that's not really a solution that's just working around the issue. It worked fine for months like this, so I'd rather not give up my launch bar if I can avoid it. Thanks though.

Bree said:

I've adjusted my taskbar to look similar to yours. The text box always appears just above the taskbar as soon as I start typing, whatever height I set it to. Doesn't yours?

Nope. The screenshot is after I've been typing. I realize now it's not just that it's obscuring the text area; the text isn't being accepted at all. I typed "notepad" for example and the start menu didn't update to search as I typed.

Strahan said:

I realize now it's not just that it's obscuring the text area; the text isn't being accepted at all. I typed "notepad" for example and the start menu didn't update to search as I typed.

It's not obscuring the text area at all then. That area doesn't appear until it has accepted the first character that you've typed.

Your problem is that Start is not seeing the typing. As a workaround for now, until we can get a fix for that, right-click on your taskbar and select 'Cortana > Show Cortana icon' (if you have Education there's no Cortana, it will say 'Search > Show search icon'). That will put a Cortana/Search icon on the taskbar next to the Start icon, clicking on it will open the text area for you to type into it. There's also an option to 'Show search box' which puts the search text box permanently on the taskbar.

Or have you been playing around in the registry to try and disable Cortana? If so that may be what's stopped Start from seeing your typing.

Bree said:

Or have you been playing around in the registry to try and disable Cortana? If so that may be what's stopped Start from seeing your typing.

Ahh, thanks. I didn't make a registry change, I had followed a website instructions on renaming a folder in systemapps to prevent it from running. I had no idea Cortana was that involved in operations. Ah well, I just put it back to the way it was and now the start menu allows me to type.

Thanks again!

Yes, Cortana is at the heart of the basic Windows Search, best not to disable her entirely. There are plenty of options to neuter most of her prying ways, but completely disabling her can have unforeseen consequences :)