Did update hose my start menu?

This morning upon turning on our computers, both desktop PC's had lost their
start menus and task bars. What's up with that? Both PC's were updated to
Win 10 from Win 7. They had been doing just fine and I was rather happy
with Windows 10. Now this happens and it is a pain in a**. I was able to
get the the control panel and do a system restore to an earlier date on my
computer. It said the restore failed, but my start menu was back. We
weren't so lucky with hubby's PC. System Restore was "off" on his machine.
Luckily he has lots of icons on his desktop so he can do basic stuff. After
doing a Google search I found that this seems to be a fairly common problem
but none of the fixes listed sounded too promising. It is now past the "Go
back to Windows 7" date, does anyone have any suggestions on how to avoid
this problem?

Camellia Sinensis wrote:
This morning upon turning on our computers, both desktop PC's had lost
their start menus and task bars. What's up with that? Both PC's were
updated to Win 10 from Win 7. They had been doing just fine and I was
rather happy with Windows 10. Now this happens and it is a pain in
a**. I was able to get the the control panel and do a system restore to
an earlier date on my computer. It said the restore failed, but my
start menu was back. We weren't so lucky with hubby's PC. System
Restore was "off" on his machine. Luckily he has lots of icons on his
desktop so he can do basic stuff. After doing a Google search I found
that this seems to be a fairly common problem but none of the fixes
listed sounded too promising. It is now past the "Go back to Windows 7"
date, does anyone have any suggestions on how to avoid this problem?


http://download.microsoft.com/downlo...rtmenu.diagcab

"Step 2: Once downloaded, double-click on the startmenu.diagcab
downloaded file to run the troubleshooter.

Step 3: Once the troubleshooter is launched, click the Next
button to let the troubleshooter to search for
Start menu problems.

Step 4: If there is an issue with the Start menu, it will fix
it automatically. If there are no issues, you will see
"Troubleshooting couldn't identify the problem" message.

You can click View detailed information link to see
potential issues that were checked and their results.

(from http://www.intowindows.com/start-men...or-windows-10/ )

*******

The download is also offered as a link from this page...

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...t-menu-cortana

HTH,
Paul

On 08/31/2016 12:46 PM, Camellia Sinensis wrote:
This morning upon turning on our computers, both desktop PC's had lost
their start menus and task bars. What's up with that? Both PC's were
updated to Win 10 from Win 7. They had been doing just fine and I was
rather happy with Windows 10. Now this happens and it is a pain in
a**. I was able to get the the control panel and do a system restore to
an earlier date on my computer. It said the restore failed, but my
start menu was back. We weren't so lucky with hubby's PC. System
Restore was "off" on his machine. Luckily he has lots of icons on his
desktop so he can do basic stuff. After doing a Google search I found
that this seems to be a fairly common problem but none of the fixes
listed sounded too promising. It is now past the "Go back to Windows 7"
date, does anyone have any suggestions on how to avoid this problem?

The fact that both computers failed at the same time with the same
symptoms suggest that there is not an OS failure but something else
going on.

With no further information on you computers, ie version, upgrade, AE,
etc. it is difficult to diagnose.

Having used Windows 10 on some of my computers since it came out over a
year ago, I am guessing that both computers are in the middle of an
upgrade that did not complete.

If so go to All Setting, Upgrade and Security, Windows Update, and click
on Check for updates. If there are any update available click to
install them now.

One of the frustration from a general use point of view for Windows 10
is the forced upgrades. I do not mind installing upgrades when they
become available. As long as I have had a computer, I always kept the
software and OS up to date, installing them as soon as they are available.

What I don't like is going to a meeting, and turning my tablet which has
my meeting notes, and find the computer is unavailable because an update
was forced into the computer as I was walking to the meeting room.

Yes they have suppose to have fixed this somewhat in AE, however with
the update last week, I had two computers that quit working because the
update was large and monopolized the ISP connection and the CPU. The
one most affect was the tablet which is turned off and on as needed, and
may be off for days.

Again the problem was detected from the Windows Update page. Once I let
the computers install the updates, every thing was back to normal.

I have turned off every switch I could find that even seems to indicate
the software is to phone home, and over all I am pleased with the speed
and functioning of Windows 10 and with the Anniversary Edition.

"Paul" wrote in message ...

Camellia Sinensis wrote:
This morning upon turning on our computers, both desktop PC's had lost
their start menus and task bars. What's up with that? Both PC's were
updated to Win 10 from Win 7. They had been doing just fine and I was
rather happy with Windows 10. Now this happens and it is a pain in a**.
I was able to get the the control panel and do a system restore to an
earlier date on my computer. It said the restore failed, but my start
menu was back. We weren't so lucky with hubby's PC. System Restore was
"off" on his machine. Luckily he has lots of icons on his desktop so he
can do basic stuff. After doing a Google search I found that this seems
to be a fairly common problem but none of the fixes listed sounded too
promising. It is now past the "Go back to Windows 7" date, does anyone
have any suggestions on how to avoid this problem?


http://download.microsoft.com/downlo...rtmenu.diagcab

"Step 2: Once downloaded, double-click on the startmenu.diagcab
downloaded file to run the troubleshooter.

Step 3: Once the troubleshooter is launched, click the Next
button to let the troubleshooter to search for
Start menu problems.

Step 4: If there is an issue with the Start menu, it will fix
it automatically. If there are no issues, you will see
"Troubleshooting couldn't identify the problem" message.

You can click View detailed information link to see
potential issues that were checked and their results.

(from http://www.intowindows.com/start-men...or-windows-10/ )

*******

The download is also offered as a link from this page...

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...t-menu-cortana

HTH,
Paul

Thank you for your reply. I had already tried that fix on hubby's computer
but after running the program it simply said that all of the apps were
installed incorrectly and did nothing to fix the problem. I ended up
installing the 3rd party classic start menu program Power Shell so at least
hubby can use his PC until I figure out just what to do. Bummer.

Camellia Sinensis wrote:


"Paul" wrote in message ...

Camellia Sinensis wrote:
This morning upon turning on our computers, both desktop PC's had
lost their start menus and task bars. What's up with that? Both
PC's were updated to Win 10 from Win 7. They had been doing just
fine and I was rather happy with Windows 10. Now this happens and it
is a pain in a**. I was able to get the the control panel and do a
system restore to an earlier date on my computer. It said the
restore failed, but my start menu was back. We weren't so lucky with
hubby's PC. System Restore was "off" on his machine. Luckily he has
lots of icons on his desktop so he can do basic stuff. After doing a
Google search I found that this seems to be a fairly common problem
but none of the fixes listed sounded too promising. It is now past
the "Go back to Windows 7" date, does anyone have any suggestions on
how to avoid this problem?


http://download.microsoft.com/downlo...rtmenu.diagcab


"Step 2: Once downloaded, double-click on the startmenu.diagcab
downloaded file to run the troubleshooter.

Step 3: Once the troubleshooter is launched, click the Next
button to let the troubleshooter to search for
Start menu problems.

Step 4: If there is an issue with the Start menu, it will fix
it automatically. If there are no issues, you will see
"Troubleshooting couldn't identify the problem" message.

You can click View detailed information link to see
potential issues that were checked and their results.

(from http://www.intowindows.com/start-men...or-windows-10/ )

*******

The download is also offered as a link from this page...

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...t-menu-cortana


HTH,
Paul

Thank you for your reply. I had already tried that fix on hubby's
computer but after running the program it simply said that all of the
apps were installed incorrectly and did nothing to fix the problem. I
ended up installing the 3rd party classic start menu program Power Shell
so at least hubby can use his PC until I figure out just what to do.
Bummer.

Did the application prompt for UAC approval ?

The user account used to run that, should probably belong
to the administrator group, and prompt for UAC. If it is
complaining like that, it suggests that maybe the diagcab
wasn't elevated when it was running. I can't see how that's
possible, but that makes more sense than all the Apps being
installed incorrectly.

If I was messing around with that computer, I'd probably
do a backup before actually trying to reinstall them.

You can also try installing another account in the Users
thing, and see if a brand-new profile picks everything
up properly.

*******

These are examples of Powershell commands. The first part
of the command, generates a list of currently installed
applications, plus their description. The second part
of the command, apparently picks one line out of each
paragraph and triggers off that.

# Type the following command to remove
# all Modern apps from the system account:

Get-AppXProvisionedPackage -online | Remove-AppxProvisionedPackage -online

# Type the following command to remove
# all Modern apps from your current user account:

Get-AppXPackage | Remove-AppxPackage

So to reinstall applications, you need to find out what
the Powershell for that would be. It could be "Add-AppxPackage".

Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml"}

Before I run one of those in Powershell, I execute the first
part and check that the output (text) looks reasonable.

Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers

Anyway, that's a pretty extreme way to reinstall them, with
plenty of danger factor. Requiring a backup before applying it.

You can open Task Manager and start Powershell from there, but
I don't know if you can elevate that way or not (run Powershell
as administrator). If worse came to worse, you could always
try psexec, to give the launched program the right credentials.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/pxexec

Paul