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DavidYorkshire-8836 avatar image
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DavidYorkshire-8836 asked STEPHENSIMPSON-5972 commented

Windows 10 - 'Your Start Menu isn't working'

We use roaming profiles, and for many years (since at least Windows 7 days) the local copy has occasionally become corrupt or stops syncing properly, and sometimes deleting the local copy of the user profile folder and the associated registry key for the user (HKLM\Software\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList) works - next time the user logs in, it pulls down the server copy and work again. Been doing this for years with no issues.

Recently on Windows 10 (2004 version), I've encountered a serious problem with this. It has occurred since we upgraded from Office 2013 to 365, but I don't know whether that's related. What happens is that once the profile and registry key have been deleted as described above, the start menu is completely broken next time the user logs in. When they click the start button they get the following message:

22140-start-menu-error.jpg

Sign out now is the only option.

This happens if they log in again, even after a reboot - basically it means that the user account cannot be used on the affected computer.

It only seems to affect the W10 (2004) machines - the terminal servers (Server 2016 and Office 365) are not affected, and removing the local copy of the profile doesn't cause this issue on them.

Anyone know how to fix this?

Thanks


windows-10-general
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JohnnyBraun-1343 avatar image
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JohnnyBraun-1343 answered

Just an update to my post. If you run the command the startmenu is working but the search box isn't.

The only way to solve the issue is to remove the user profile once again through the wizard. (run "rundll32 sysdm.cpl,EditUserProfiles" through an elevated shell)

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KB-5608 avatar image
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KB-5608 answered

I realize this "solution" wasn't available at the time, but I was able to update from W10-2004 to W10-20H2 and the problem resolved itself.
I had tried many other fixes (listed here and elsewhere) without success. Luckily this happened on my profile at work before I updated anyone else to 2004 so being the guinea pig actually paid off. Here are my notes on the issue in case anyone else is helped by them.
Thanks to the other people in this forum for being so helpful with their efforts, especially the OP as he did a lot of helpful testing (IMO).

Start Menu doesn't work ("Critical Error") and displays "Sign out now" button instead


To create the problem for user1, switch to another (admin) user, and delete "user1" folder and "user1" profilelist entry in the registry.
Normally logging in again as user1 will rebuild the profile (or retrieve it from the server) but under W10 2004 the Start Menu becomes corrupt.

0) Upgrade to W10 20H2
(Fixed the issue for me on a W10 2004 version PC)
Trying the other listed fixes did not work for me and I can't use a Start Menu replacement at work, nor did I wish to create new profiles and manually move data for people when this happens.

1) Reregister Start Menu
Log in under admin account and run powershell as admin

Get-appxpackage -all shellexperience -packagetype bundle |% {add-appxpackage -register -disabledevelopmentmode ($_.installlocation + “\appxmetadata\appxbundlemanifest.xml”)}

Close powershell and reboot

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

3) I had the same issue. I had deleted the profile directory and the profilelist entry from the registry which previously allowed for a reset profile.
To fix the broken start menu issue on my end, I deleted the profile from Users and Accounts, and recreated it. It immediately corrected the problem.

4) Scripted workaround
I've absolutely the same problem at our customers. If a AD userprofile (no roaming profile or something else special) was deleted through the "normal" method with deleting the key at ProfileList and the files at c:\users, the startmenu is broken after a new login.
The only thing that helped yet was to start the following command (found it at another post) at the powershell at the users context:

taskkill /F /IM explorer.exe ; taskkill /F /IM SearchApp.exe ; taskkill /F /IM SearchUI.exe; taskkill /F /IM ShellExperienceHost.exe; taskkill /F /IM StartMenuExperiencehost.exe ; Start-Sleep 2 ; cd $Env:localappdata\Packages\Microsoft.Windows.ShellExperienceHost_cw5n1h2txyewy ; Remove-Item -Recurse -Force .\TempState\ ; cd $Env:localappdata\Packages\Microsoft.Windows.StartMenuExperiencehost_cw5n1h2txyewy ; Remove-Item -Recurse -Force .\TempState\ ; Add-AppxPackage -register "C:\Windows\SystemApps\ShellExperienceHost_cw5n1h2txyewy\AppxManifest.xml" -DisableDevelopmentMode ; Add-AppxPackage -register "C:\Windows\SystemApps\Microsoft.Windows.StartMenuExperienceHost_cw5n1h2txyewy\AppxManifest.xml" -DisableDevelopmentMode ; Start-Process "explorer.exe"

*Just an update to my post. If you run the command the startmenu is working but the search box isn't.
The only way to solve the issue is to remove the user profile once again through the wizard. (run "rundll32 sysdm.cpl,EditUserProfiles" through an elevated shell)


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RussellProthero-6173 avatar image
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RussellProthero-6173 answered

Have encountered this issue recently with one of our clients.

Seems the issue is persisting in 20H2. In my case I started with a clean install of 20h2, tried logging into a profile that had been misconfigured and ended up creating a local profile instead of roaming. Removed the local profile folder and deleted from the registry. Logged back in with the roaming profile - start menu/search broken.

Tried the above powershell script, it was working a few weeks ago but now does not fix the issue. Bonus points, if you log into a second unaffected machine with the affected user account, it too loses its start menu etc. Only fix at this point seems to be rebuilding the machine, deleting the entire v6 profile folder and copying back from the original win7 v2 folder.

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JohnnyBraun-1343 avatar image
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JohnnyBraun-1343 answered RussellProthero-6173 commented

Hi Russell, you don't have to rebuild the machine, like I already said in my post above, it is enough if you delete the profile through the "new normal" way:
The only way to solve the issue is to remove the user profile once again through the wizard.
-> run "rundll32 sysdm.cpl,EditUserProfiles" logged in as another admin

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Hey mate,

Per my post, the powershell script listed in this thread is no longer fixing the issue for me. Removing the profile through the 'new' way just leaves me right back where I was, because the powershell script didn't fix anything in the first place. I haven't had time to figure out what has changed about the powershell commands (if anything) to find out why it no longer works. But as it is now, after running, the start menu remains broken. If I get time to figure this out I'll post back.

For the moment I'm working on a faster deployment method for my office, at the moment we're building stuff from scratch like it's the stone ages or something.

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