Windows Start button not working

Hi,

Welcome to Windows 10 family, if you are facing issue with start menu then try to follow the steps provided below and see if it helps you to fix the issue.

Troubleshoot problems opening the Start menu or Cortana

Do keep us updated.

Regards,

I have found a solution that has worked for me once so I can't say that it is a reliable approach. However it is consistent with a potential cause of the problem.

Many posters have suggested restarting the computer to solve this problem. I haven't waded through the 30 pages of this thread to see if I am duplicating a posted solution but what worked (again, once) for me was to do a TOTAL shutdown. See http://windowsten.info/tutorials/5767-how-to-fully-shut-down-windows-10.

When you close Windows 8, 8.1, or 10 normally  you aren't really erasing all session information. Instead, Windows is saving its internal 'state' and when you start the computer again Windows just rereads the saved state from disk and restores it. That means if you have a problem with the Start button the problem is restored along with all of your other settings.

The link above gives the command line step to force Windows to totally shut down and not save its current operating configuration. The next time you start Windows it starts the old fashioned way, by executing a complete start up sequence and not by reading the old session state. Note, this doesn't erase anything you have configured, it just takes a little longer to start the computer since Windows has to execute commands in its startup sequence instead of just reading the internal memory from disk and copying it back to memory.

I suspect that some sequence of events is causing the problem. I can go months with no issues and then experience the problem again. Other posters have reported that the problem goes away when they do a Windows update which is understandable as the update probably does a total restart of Windows. In addition, I regularly use three different accounts on the same computer and in at least one instance had the problem occur for one account but not for another.

I followed the directions in the link to create a desktop shortcut to do a total shutdown. (This is partly because I use SQL Server and this sequence also saves a step with shutting down this program.) If you don't want to create a shortcut you can right-click Start (that seems to work all of the time), select Command Prompt, and type "shutdown /s /t 0" (without quotes).

Good luck to all of us. I'd be interested in knowing if this works for anyone else because I haven't had the problem resurface since trying this once.

Hi,

Would you believe - my Start Button has begun to work again!  I know that's weird, but yes, it has started to work again, just like it did at first.  I'm still careful about a few actions - I don't want to break it again.  So, first thing, I try to always 'click with patience'.  In other words.  I give the 'command' (click of the mouse) an opportunity to work--  Before, if I didn't see immediate results I would click again, and again, finding out that this does not help matters...

I kept thinking, "Maybe I need to check or at least re-run 'updates' and then I waited for the updates to run and do their thing inside the computer.  I believe I was instructed to restart the computer to complete the update process.  All this time I kept telling myself to be patient and not double click - giving the computer a chance to correct itself.  -Then, it happened.  The first thing I noticed was the dancing circle beside the start button, where it says - Ask me anything.  I couldn't believe it.  It bounced up and down a few times and I thought - "if that is happening, the Start Button just might be working, too.  So I clicked once and waited for the start menu to open and in a moment or two it did.  I was 'flabber-gasted'!  Finally, it's working again...

So, what did I do to fix it?  Nothing, really!  Oh, I tried most of the various recommended fixes, and was dis-hearten when I didn't see immediate results, but honestly - the biggest thing I did was to just 'take my time and not be in a rush for things to happen by clicking again and again.  My recommendation: Keep running the updates, just in case they failed to run automatically, and be patient, give the computer an opportunity to simply correct itself...

My wish and hope to you all is to have the same eventual success that I am enjoying now that my start button is finally working again...