Windows 10: Fixing problem where Start Menu does not appear when clicking Start button

Today the Start menu started not to appear when I clicked the Start button. Still, the Search bar worked, and the admin menu worked when I right-clicked the Start button. I followed suggestions I read elsewhere:

• ran system file checker sfc and it found no problems.
• the Start menu worked for other user accounts.
• used Search to open settings, and enabled Use Start Full Screen, and that didn't do anything either
• killed and re-ran explorer.exe, to no avail.

This did fix it: I re-registered the built-in Windows app that manages the Start menu. There are procedures to do this that you might find on Google, but they didn't work on Windows 10 version 2004 April 2004, because the app packaging changed at some point.


Here are the steps that fixed the problem for Windows 10 version 2004:


1. Right-click the Start button and select Windows PowerShell Admin. Click Yes to Do You Want to Allow This App to Make Changes to your Device?


If Windows Power Shell Admin does not appear but Command Prompt Admin does, select that, click Yes on the "Do You Want..." prompt, type powershell into the Command Prompt window, and then press Enter.


2. Highlight the following command text, right-click it, and select Copy:


Get-appxpackage -all *startmenuexp* % {add-appxpackage -register -disabledevelopmentmode $_.installlocation + "\appxmanifest.xml"}


3. Click in the PowerShell window and type Ctrl+V hold down the Ctrl key and hit the letter V to paste in the command, and then press Enter.


4. Close the PowerShell or Command Prompt window.


This fixed the issue and the Start button started working again immediately, without logging out or rebooting.

:)