Start Menu inquiry on old Dell 760 SFF

Hi, so much depends on what random people may or may not have done.

Things that may help:
Start Menu Troubleshooter in Windows 10
Reset Start Layout in Windows 10
Re-register Start Menu in Windows 10

-from the huge searchable Tutorials section - do feel free to have a look.

If you can't get the Win 10 start menu working, grab a copy of Open Shell (free) - a great configurable start menu that's a whole lot more capable and rational than Win 10's with full drag 'n drop support.

With that installed you can still use Win 10's start menu.

Also note these settings from my laptop - as you mention tablet settings:

The computer originally came with Win Vista. Make sure it has Win 10 32 bits and not 64 bits.

- If it does have Win 10 32 bits, backup all personal data and do a Remove everything reset
- If it doesn't have Win 10 32 bits, do a clean install

A huge upgrade would be to replace the HDD with a SSD. It will make the computer boot in seconds rather than in minutes.
SATA SSDs

There is no point putting 32bit on the computer. its nuanced you are effectively capping the computers potential.

4GB address space means that the computer will be paging a lot because 3.5gb is used by windows where 32bit applications are up to 2gb or around 4gb if they have large address space. Combine that with FSB on this computer and it means slower than its potential.

You want to avoid this. These computers can go up to 8GB so might as well make effective use of this and Ram is faster than the hard drive. You avoid locking yourself out of 64bit computing at the same time.

its nuanced and the scale cancels itself out but you get bigger registers and 64bit parity.

its a 64bit machine use the correct version.

Windows XP Pro was the first to be available as either 32-bit or 64-bit. The Upgrade to Win10 should be same as Vista was unless wiping the drive and doing a clean install. Main issue in upgrading is downloading the correct .iso or getting the Both choice for creating the bootable DVD or USB Thumb drive.

ozstar said:

Win 10 Home 22H2 17 Nov 20 19045.4.70

I assume 19045.4.70 is a mistype for 19045.4170 but I don't know what 17 Nov 20 might refer to.

ozstar said:

... set it up as a Tablet

Please explain what you mean by this.

ozstar said:

Dell Optiplex 760 box

Does "box" mean it's a desktop rather than a laptop?



It would help if you included pictures [screenshots] of the things you want comments on.
How to Upload and Post Screenshots and Files - TenForumsTutorials


It would also help if you numbered each paragraph, i.e. the description of each symptom, because I think that responses might otherwise be misunderstood and the thread might become too chaotic to be of any use to you.




All the best,
Denis

Box as in cuboid...?

So I suggest a list like this:-

ozstar said:

#1 - Win 10 Home 22H2 17 Nov 20 19045.4.70 Windows Feature 1000.19054.1000.0

# 2 - ... old Dell Optiplex 760 box with Win 10 Home and some friends have messed with it and set it up as a Tablet.

#3 - It runs very slow

#4 - When turned on it shows the Win 10 picture screen but takes a long while before the login screen and when inserted goes to a blank but regular blue screen. I expect to see icons here. There is the Task bar at lower screen with some icons on it which works fine.

#5 - If I right click the Start icon lower left I do get the menu for Settings etc.

#6 - When I left click the Start icon, after a wait I get a white screen with some icons bunched up in the middle of the screen.

#7 - Top left START, Pinned All Apps with Pinned chosen every time it starts.

#8 - I clicked START top left and chose ALL Apps and they all show in 3 columns.

#9 (or poss this comment is just more about #8) - I expected them to be in what I thought was the left bottom panel Start menu with large square icons that I see in Win Pro.

Denis

Malneb said:

There is no point putting 32bit on the computer. its nuanced you are effectively capping the computers potential.

4GB address space means that the computer will be paging a lot because 3.5gb is used by windows where 32bit applications are up to 2gb or around 4gb if they have large address space. Combine that with FSB on this computer and it means slower than its potential.

You want to avoid this. These computers can go up to 8GB so might as well make effective use of this and Ram is faster than the hard drive. You avoid locking yourself out of 64bit computing at the same time.

its nuanced and the scale cancels itself out but you get bigger registers and 64bit parity.

its a 64bit machine use the correct version.

The Dell 760 SFF has 2G of DDR2 memory and a Core 2Duo CPU. I don't think it worth spending money on more DDR2 memory.

Win 10 64 minimum memory is 2G. If you use some for the graphics it will work bellow minimum. There will be nothing left for the programs. It will use disk virtual memory that is very slow.
Win 10 32 minimum memory is 1G. If you use some for the graphics it will still be some left for the programs.
windows-10-system-requirements

In other words, with 2G of memory the computer will work better with Win 10 32 bits.
Win 64 is only necessary when you have more than 3.2G of memory available for the OS.

It is difficult to find DDR2 RAM and becoming difficult to find DDR3 from places like Crucial, probably will need to shop on Ebay. That will increasingly make old computers difficult to improve to meet new needs/programs. I have a few modules on hand I've salvaged, might come in handy some day.