[Fix] Start Menu and Taskbar Icons Not Working in Windows 10 After Update

PROBLEM SYMPTOM:

In Windows 10, when you click on Start button, the Start Menu doesn’t open. Also nothing happens when you press WIN key on your keyboard to launch Start Menu. So basically Start Menu won’t launch at all.

Same thing happens with Taskbar notification area icons such as Action Center, Volume, Battery, Network, Clock, etc. When you click on the icons to launch the fly-outs, nothing happens.

So Start Menu and Taskbar icons are broken and not working in Windows 10. Sometimes the Start Menu may open but it’ll be grayed out i.e. disabled. Sometimes you may receive following error message as soon as you click on Start button to open Start Menu:

When you click on “Sign out now” button, it logs off and shows login screen. When you sign in again, the problem still persists and the error message again appears when you click on Start button. The loop continues forever.

Most of the times this issue occurs after installing new updates via Windows Update or after upgrading to a new Windows 10 version. Users are unable to access Start Menu and Taskbar icons.

PROBLEM REASON:

It seems the problem is related to removing all modern (UWP) apps using PowerShell method in Windows 10 newer versions. If you remove a few apps, it doesn’t cause this issue but if you remove all apps at once, it breaks Start Menu and Taskbar notification bar icons.

I think removing all apps triggers some check in the system which forces some system apps such as ShellExperienceHost.exe, SearchUI.exe, etc to stop working which are responsible to provide functionality to Start Menu and other modern (metro) UI elements as mentioned in “Important Note 3” given at the end of this tutorial. You can check it yourself by opening Task Manager. You’ll find that ShellExperienceHost.exe and SearchUI.exe services are not running in the background, that’s why all modern UI elements such as Start Menu and Taskbar fly-outs don’t work.

Related: Following tutorial contains the PowerShell method to remove all or selected apps:

[Guide] How to Remove All Built-in Apps in Windows 10

Also Check:

[Tip] Do This When Start Menu Not Working in Windows 10

PROBLEM SOLUTION 1:

There are many solutions to fix the issue. You can use “Reset This PC” feature to restore your Windows 10 to default state, you can repair or reinstall Windows using setup disc or you can try to create a new user profile.

The most easiest and quickest solution to fix this issue is reinstalling and re-registering apps as given here.

If you are also facing this issue, following steps will help you in resolving the issue:

STEP 1: Open PowerShell as Administrator:

Press WIN+X keys together and click on “Windows PowerShell (Admin)” option present in the menu. It’ll launch PowerShell as Administrator.

STEP 2: Run Required Command:

Now copy/paste following command in PowerShell window:

This command will take a few seconds in completion and will reinstall and re-register all built-in apps. If you receive any error message, ignore it. You may need to restart the computer to take effect.

PS:

If you don’t want to reinstall all apps, run following commands to reinstall ShellExperienceHost and Cortana applications only:

That’s it. Now try to open Start Menu or Taskbar icons and it’ll work without any problem.

IMPORTANT NOTE:

If you deleted or renamed “C:\Program Files\WindowsApps” and “C:\Users\user_name\AppData\Local\Packages” folders to permanently remove apps, restore the folders again. If you just renamed the folders, you can restore their names. If you deleted the folders, you can restore the folders using Windows 10 setup ISO. First mount the ISO and then extract the folders from Install.WIM file using 7-Zip program as mentioned in following tutorial:

How to Extract Original (Default) System Files from Windows Setup Disc

You can also copy these folders from another Windows 10 machine.

PROBLEM SOLUTION 2:

If the above method doesn’t work for you or if you don’t want to reinstall all apps, you can try the built-in Windows Store apps troubleshooter tool to fix this issue:

1. Open Settings from Start Menu or press WIN+I keys together to directly launch Settings app.

2. Now go to Update & security -> Troubleshoot page.

PS: Alternatively, You can directly launch this page using “ms-settings:troubleshoot” command in RUN dialog box as mentioned here.

3. Now scroll down to bottom and click on “Windows Store Apps” label. Now click on “Run the troubleshooter” button.

It’ll launch the troubleshooter tool which will detect the issues and will fix them.

It should also solve the Start Menu and Taskbar notification area icons problem.

PROBLEM SOLUTION 3:

Microsoft also provides an official troubleshooting tool to find and fix Start Menu related problems.

First of all download the troubleshooter tool from following link:

Download Windows 10 Start Menu Troubleshooter

After downloading, run the tool and it’ll automatically find and fix issues present in your computer which are causing Start Menu and Taskbar related problems.

This tool automatically registers all installed UWP apps and fixes corrupted tiles database. If it finds that some apps are not installed correctly, it notifies the user. It also checks Windows Registry for permission issues on various registry keys.

PROBLEM SOLUTION 4:

You can also try the sfc /scannow command to restore all default system files which may also fix the Start Menu issue.

To learn how to use the command, check out METHOD 4 mentioned in following tutorial:

How to Remove or Uninstall 3rd Party Transformation Packs (or Skin Packs) in Windows

PROBLEM SOLUTION 5:

Open Command Prompt or PowerShell as Administrator and run following commands one by one:

DISM /Online /Cleanup-image /Scanhealth

DISM /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth

These commands will take a few minutes to finish. After running the commands restart your computer and it should fix the problem.

PROBLEM SOLUTION 6:

Also make sure ShellExperienceHost.exe and SearchUI.exe executables are not getting blocked by Windows Firewall or any 3rd party security program installed in your PC. Sometimes if these executable files are blocked in Firewall, these kind of issues might occur.

If you find these executables listed in Firewall, remove them and it should solve the problem.

PROBLEM SOLUTION 7:

Sometimes creating a new user account also fixes the issue. You can create a new user account using Control Panel -> User Accounts or using Settings -> Accounts page. Once you create a new user account, log into new user account and it should fix the issue.

PROBLEM SOLUTION 8:

You can also use registry tweaks to disable new fly-out menus which appear when you click on Taskbar notification area icons. These registry tweaks will restore classic UI and menus for all system tray icons.

Check out METHOD 5 in following tutorial:

[Tip] Restoring Classic Programs and User Interface in Windows 10

Once you apply these registry tweaks, all Taskbar notification area icons will start working again.

PROBLEM SOLUTION 9:

If nothing works for you and also you don’t want to restore all modern (UWP) apps, you can install 3rd party software to bring back classic or Windows 7 style Start Menu in Windows 10. Check out following article to learn more about these software:

[AIO] List of Free Software to Get Start Menu and Start Button Back in Windows

All software mentioned in the above article will work fine in Windows 10.

To fix Taskbar notification area icons, you can restore classic UI of these icons with the help of following tutorial (check point 5):

[Tip] Restoring Classic Programs and User Interface in Windows 10

Once you restore the classic UI, the notification area icons will work fine as it doesn’t require ShellExperienceHost.exe service.