Windows 10: Windows 10 Start Menu / Cortana Not working being caused by GPO

Hello everyone, im new here and really need help. I support a school district, the majority of our machines are Win 7 however we are starting to upgrade a few users to Windows 10 so they can get used to it before the mass roll out.

I am having an issue though, i upgrade the machine to Windows 7 and everything is working all good, then when i put the machine in the correct OU gpupdate etc... when i log back in the start button/menu doesn't work, cortana doesn't work neither does the search functionality. I have researched all over the web and none of the fixes that people are going to suggest work like

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

that doesn't work.... it has something to do with the current GPO that's in place and i don't know what is causing it. I tested to make sure it is the GPO, i had it working then moved it to the OU with the GPO it stopped working, then in order to get it to work again i had to "Reset this PC" after doing the reset it works again. then i moved to OU again and it stopped working.... could someone please review the GPO (See attached) and let me know if anything you think might be causing this behavior im completely stumped... or can someone let me know where in the registry i may be able to make changes to make it work again.

:)

 

Group policy "Allow cortana = disabled" not working

Using 10 pro on a domain.

Yesterday my domain admin set "allow Cortana = disabled" in GPO - my client picked it up correctly and Cortana refused to work.

This morning it's working again. The GPO hasn't changed ("Allow Cortana" is still "Disabled") and GPResult shows that setting being implemented... But Cortana's not disabled.

Any ideas?

 

Windows 10 Start menu is not updating Most Used list, etc...

Hi,

I had a similar, but not identical issue with the Most Used items in Windows 10 Enterprise start menu.

The Start Menu all worked OK, but the Most Used list never appeared.

After trawling through countless blogs and web-posts relating to this issue, I started to do some testing. I moved one of the Windows 10 PC's into an AD OU that had no GPO's assigned, and the Most Recent items still were not working. I remembered seeing
a post stating it had to be disabled, rebooted, and re-enabled to reset it. That worked on the PC with no GPO's.

So I then systematically went through all of our GPO's, until I found the one that actually caused the Most used items to be disabled:

User Configuration / Administrative Templates / Start Menu and Taskbar /
Turn off personalized menus

This was "Enabled" in our user GPO, as a left-over form the Windows XP days. This GPO allegedly only applies to Windows 2000, Windows XP, Vista, Server 2003 and Server 2008. However, this obviously does have an impact on Windows 10 systems, as reverting
this to "Not Configured" or "Disabled" allows the Most Used to start working.

I hope this helps others resolve this annoying issue.

Martin

 

Welcome aboard, Djm. If both the Start Button and Cortana have stopped working, it is probably the same cause. Here are a list of "cures" for the problem, none of which will harm your machine:

Folks, so many people are having trouble with the Start Button not working in Windows 10, that I have assembled all the various cures. None of them will work every time, but there’s a good chance that one of them will.

1) Go to this web page Has your Windows 10 Start menu stopped working? Here are four ways to fix it - BT to learn how to use PowerShell (a built-in Windows utility that you already have) to fix it. His first two ideas are pretty good. Don’t do his more drastic solutions, though, until you try these other ones.
2) Uninstall your anti-virus program and re-install it.
3) Simply use the Windows key (between the Ctrl and Alt keys) instead
4) Type “Classic Shell” into a search engine and install it. It is a free Start Button that works great.
5) Use System Restore

On its official site, Microsoft recommends:

Method 1:
1 Open run command. (Windows logo + r)
2. type regedit and press enter.
3. click ok when notification window prompt.
4. Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER>Software>Microsoft>Windows>CurrentVersion>Explorer>Advance
5. Create a Dword with name ‘EnableXamlStartMenu’.
6. Give it value 0
7. Log off and login again.
If it still doesn't work try these methods.

Method 2:
I would suggest you to try ‘sfc scan’ if you haven’t tried it yet.
Let’s use the System File Checker (SFC) tool to see if it can find any missing or corrupted system files. If so, it will attempt to repair and/or replace them. Follow these steps:
1. Press Windows +x
2. Select command prompt admin.
3. At the command prompt type “sfc /scannow” (no quotes), and then press ENTER
Method 3:
1. Press Windows + x
2. Select command prompt admin.
3. Type dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth
4. Reboot PC.

 

I tried all those suggestions.. No luck..... i've been at this for a few days now. The machine works perfectly fine until i put it in the OU that has the GPO attached to it then it stops working..... The key is something in that GPO im hoping that by providing the screenshots other sets of eyes might see something im missing.

 

Hi, Win 10 and Cortana etc are relatively sensitive to people changing settings. I can't search your jpgs, so will suggest a few basic things:
1. Have a look in the Action Centre. Is Location active (tile illuminated)?
2. In Settings, Privacy, General do you see Some settings are managed....?

If either of these is true, post back. You would be best advised to resolve them.

Obvious question.. what happens if you reverse the GPO changes successively?

 

Yes location is active.
I do not see "some settings are managed"

If i take the machine out of the OU or removed the GPO it does not restore the functionality, i actually need to do a system reset and then it works again but as soon as it goes back into that OU it stops working again... and this GPO is our Default Computer Policy

 

It would help you can apply some of your GPO policy changes to a working system and identify a subset within which the problem is created. There may even be more than one cause.

Disk imaging working configuration might help you by allowing you to restore the PC once the problem appears to allow more detailed investigation or a repeat test.

 

Our GPO works no problem, this is the first Windows 10 machine we put in that container and the start menu / cortana is the only issue, so with that being said it's something in the policy....,

 

did you ever solve this? i'm having the exact same problem.

pc is fine with W10, then as soon as it's attached to the domain, cortana, start menu and search all fail.

i've tried sfc and dism methods. and reregistering all the apps using powershell - makes no difference.

 

No i still did not solve it, and im banging my head against the wall, i think i have tried everything i can find on the web. If anyone could assist in getting this cleared up would be most appreciated !!

 

i kind of got round it. i refreshed the pc, so put everything back as was just after upgrade.

i moved the pc to a OU with no gpo's on it. then attached it to the domain and everything remained working.

not ideal... but got it working. if you can work using group policy on just users/groups then this may work for you.

 

I am only an egg, so please don't shoot me. It seems that this issue is limited to machines that have been upgraded to Win 10. Have you tried doing a clean install of 10 after the upgrade (to secure digital entitlement)?

 

The people who have done a clean install report less problems. But to be fair, they are usually more tech savvy than most people who do upgrades.

 

I'm having this exact same problem.

I have a Windows 10 x64 Enterprise LTSB image that works fine on the VirtualBox server, but the second I pull it down to a physical machine, search is completely broken. Now I know that Cortana is still in LTSB even though Microsoft claims it's not, so it's probably the same issue as other people are experiencing.

I've narrowed it down to a GPO of some kind, but I haven't gone into a granular search through the various policies here that could be causing it. The VBox image does not have all the group policy items that a production machine does.

Has anyone determined what group policy setting causes search to blow up?

I'm working slowly on applying each individual policy to see what happens and I will let everyone know if I find anything.