Windows 10: Start Menu Search Box Suddenly Changed

Where you see the Start Menu for Windows 10 on the lower left side of your screen, there is usually a white box which reads 'Type here to search'. I can no longer type anything there on my desktop or laptop.

I now get a black popup that has some apps at the top and other search items at the bottom. I just want to be able to type something into the search box.

Is there a way to get it back to the way it was? Is this a result of a recent update? Any info or advice appreciated.

:)

 

Start Menu Search

Hi,

About your issue regarding the Start menu or Search, in order for us to assist you better. Please answer the question:

• Were there any recent changes made to your system prior to the issue?

In the meantime, we suggest you to check this link:
Troubleshoot problems opening the Start menu or Cortana. It contains troubleshooting steps prior to the issue.

We'll look forward to your response.

 

Shortcuts to Folders/Files in Start Menu Search Box


Hi, great you managed to fix Cortana- that can be difficult. Far too fragile- early stage for Win 10.

How to give cortana extra commands(kind of) / open your programs. | Se7enSins Gaming Community
is this:
Consider the old start menu folders in Win 7/8 and earlier. One of them is the folder mentioned in that article. So all that's happening is Cortana is finding things in the old start menu folder, just like the search box in the start menu in previous windows editions.

Now I upgraded and I had/have a LOT of programs installed. One of them is 7-zip. So if I type 7-zip in the search box, it finds it. So all that's happening is they are suggesting adding some unique string in the old start menu folder.
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Note that there seems to be a bug in the new start menu, and I've come across another post on this forum exploring what I also see. Thus not all folders in the old start menu are available via 'All apps' - only some. And where those folders in my start menu contained subfolders, those subfolder contents are stripped out and presented linearly. Thus if I look at one folder (which containtained the shortcut folders of many programs) in the Win 10 start menu, go to the arrow and view the contents, as I scan down, suddenly I see Help Help Help Help Help... (all the help shortcuts from various programs which were nicely contained in subfolders in the old start menu.

Classic Shell presents these properly.

What does this apparent major oversight mean for this approach? Well, if the folder is empty (New Win 10 install) then it will work fine. If the string you want to search for is unique, it will work fine. However the entry 'should' also appear in the Win 10 start menu All Apps listing. (Unless, because of the bug, it's not displayed!).

 

Start Menu Search

Hi, Yes. I tried changing my primary SSD from MBR to GPT via Ease Us Partition Tool. All my other drives besides the main successfully converted but not my primary disk. When the application was trying to convert the disk I received a Kernal In Page Error.
Hope this helps!