UPDATE:
Eventually, my laptop became so corrupted, it would no longer boot up. The last MS tech I talked to recommended a fresh install but the Asus' HDD used GPT formatting so I had to reformat...

I spent nearly 10 hours over a two day period on the phone with several MS Windows 10 Support Techs - each tech tried different things but none had any success fixing my laptop (Windows 8.1 to...

Same exact problem... even Microsoft's tech support couldn't help. Suspect it is Symantec's Antivirus causing 1511 update to fail and now I get the "CRITICAL ERROR - Start Menu and CORTANA aren't...