Windows 10: Start menu inoperable and nothing working after reset of new 2017 Surface Pro

Hi everyone,


I have just traded my 2017 macbook pro for an equivalent spec 2017 Surface Pro, and did a full reset to factory with the full disk clean option to ensure there was nothing lurking in hiding on the SSD, and after the reset process finished reinstalling windows nothing seems to work.

Left clicking the start menu does absolutely nothing. Right clicking it brings up the secondary menu, but only task manager, run, and Powershell seem to work.
I have done a bit of reading and have already tried the sfc and dism commands through powershell.

Sfc came back with 0 faults, dism command seemed to do nothing.

I have tried the regedit tweak changing the value of start to 4 in the registry

I have reset the System 4 times in total with zero variation in results.

I tried forcing an update with run - wuauclt which seemed to think about doing something for a second, then resumed doing absolutely nothing.

And I have tried reinstalling windows apps via power shell with the command "Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)AppXManifest.xml"}"

this last action seemed to shed the most light on the cause of the problem as the whole screen filled with red error messages telling me that the action could not be completed as the path didn't exist for any of the apps it was attempting to install.
I'm thinking that somehow the recovery partition of Windows on this 2017 Surface Pro has a problem and isn't installing any of the windows apps when it installs the base system.

At the moment I've made a new recovery USB on my old Lenovo windows10 rig and am using that to try and force it to download an update and then probably reset it for a 5th time.


It's getting to be a bit of a joke at this point though.
Any time I had to reset any of my old macbooks I have just told it to reset and come back 20 mins later to a fresh install. Zero problems, zero fuss.
I made the switch back to windows because some apps that would make my work much easier are only available on windows, but so far I am most disappointed with the whole experience. Isn't Microsoft one of the world leaders in computer technology? How can a simple reset on one of their premium models be such an arduous task?


Has anyone else had this problem? and if so how did you manage to fix it?

:)

 

new arc mouse not working with surface pro 2017

Hi Clyde,

Normally, this issue may occur due to the incompatibility of the driver or if there were settings that were not configured properly. We'd like to know if you're getting any error messages when trying to pair your mouse with your PC. Also, have you tried using
a different mouse on your Surface Pro 2017?

In the meantime, we suggest that you follow the steps on this link and check
if it helps to resolve the issue.

We'll be looking forward to your response.

 

New Surface Pro 3 Firmware Updates - August 24, 2017

Source: Microsoft Surface Pro 3 update history | Surface firmware updates

See also: Updates for Surface Pro 3 (24 Aug 2017) Surface

Surface Pro 3 firmware and driver package download link: Download Surface Pro 3 from Official Microsoft Download Center

 

New Surface Pro 4 Firmware Updates - Sept. 14th 2017

Source: Surface Pro 4 update history - Microsoft Support