SOLVED Start menu is shy; it's hiding behind the taskbar

[Strahan]

Hi. Today, out of the blue, my start menu has started to hide behind the taskbar. It's rather annoying, as the area you type in is obscured by the taskbar now so I cannot see what is being typed:

I rebooted, no dice. Unlocked/relocked the taskbar, no dice. Moved it to the top then moved it back to the bottom, no dice. Any ideas?

 

[Norton]

Try right clicking on the taskbar. Select "Search" and see if by chance the search box or icon is hidden.

 

[Strahan]

Hmm. When I right click the taskbar, I have no search option. OH, OK. I had to right click the "start button" (Windows logo) to find Search. Alas, that does nothing. No dialogue, no change in menus/windows opening or anything.

 

[Norton]

Have you attempted to use system restore. "Restore" your PC to an earlier point in time, before the event occurred?

 

[davehc]

Possibly you have too many icons in the taskbar? Are you able to drag the taskbar down to a single layer - I see you have it double?
fwiw, I think you may also have an outdated Windows 10. What version are you using? Should be build 16299.64.

 

[Strahan]

Yea, that's the version I'm on.

The problem was found though; I had pulled the plug on Cortana, not realizing that without Cortana this functionality goes bye-bye. So I just turned it back on and bam, now it works like it used to. I just gotta deal with a freaking largely unwanted program running all the time *sigh*

Thanks all.

 

[davehc]

Glad it worked for you. Interesting feedback though. I have Cortana turned off, but have not (Yet!) experienced your problem.

 

[Strahan]

It may be because of how I did it. I had already told the UI that I didn't want Cortana, but I was going to Task Manager to kill off a hung process and saw a Cortana process. I was annoyed and didn't want even the negligible amount of resources taken by something I do not use so I read online how to kill it and was directed to rename c:\Windows\SystemApps\Microsoft.Windows.Cortana_cw5n1h2txyewy to like Microsoft.Windows.Cortana_cw5n1h2txyewy_bak. That worked, Cortana no longer had a process. Seems like a strange way to do it though, so I assume you likely followed a different path...? Maybe that explains the discrepancy in behavior.

 

[davehc]

Ok. If you now have what you want, then problem over. I still have a thought that the basic problem is your double width Taskbar - too many icons for a single row.

 

[Danedg]

I shut off Cortana and after the last update the search box with accompanied choices dissappeared. I won't turn on Cortana so I use Windows button + s and everything appears. My experience has been that updates are ill conceived and only make things more difficult.

 

[John Bloom]

Danedg, did you shut off Cortana completely (e.g. background process never runs)? All the kill that I've seen have shut off the user interface and the data collection (e.g. the registry edit to AllowCortana = 0 ), but the background process still runs. The claim is that ordinary search relies on the Cortana process.

 

[bassfisher6522]

Hi. Today, out of the blue, my start menu has started to hide behind the taskbar. It's rather annoying, as the area you type in is obscured by the taskbar now so I cannot see what is being typed:

I rebooted, no dice. Unlocked/relocked the taskbar, no dice. Moved it to the top then moved it back to the bottom, no dice. Any ideas?

If you look at your tas

Hi. Today, out of the blue, my start menu has started to hide behind the taskbar. It's rather annoying, as the area you type in is obscured by the taskbar now so I cannot see what is being typed:

I rebooted, no dice. Unlocked/relocked the taskbar, no dice. Moved it to the top then moved it back to the bottom, no dice. Any ideas?

I just saw this thread and a red light went off looking at your attachment. So to verify my hunch, I recreated your issue.

What I see is that your taskbar is double in height. So I unlocked my taskbar, dragged it to the same height and clicked on the start menu. Sure enough, start menu is now behind the taskbar. So it looks like davehc was on the right track with the icons.

 

[John Bloom]

If you look at your tas



I just saw this thread and a red light went off looking at your attachment. So to verify my hunch, I recreated your issue.

What I see is that your taskbar is double in height. So I unlocked my taskbar, dragged it to the same height and clicked on the start menu. Sure enough, start menu is now behind the taskbar. So it looks like davehc was on the right track with the icons.

 

[John Bloom]

FYI, my machine doesn't have that behavior. It doesn't matter how tall the taskbar is.

I did have an issue recently with the search box not being shown, just the search icon. Right clicking on the task bar and selecting Search shows that search can either be completely hidden, show the icon only, or show the search box. Strahan's picture matches what I see if I hide search completely.

 

[Danedg]

Danedg, did you shut off Cortana completely (e.g. background process never runs)? All the kill that I've seen have shut off the user interface and the data collection (e.g. the registry edit to AllowCortana = 0 ), but the background process still runs. The claim is that ordinary search relies on the Cortana process.

No as far as I can tell the Cortana process is still running. Unfortunately I can't get the registry editor to direct me to the Cortana process. I see that my latest update just hid my search bar so now I've turned it back on. Cortana is still on the menu.

 

[John Bloom]

Danedg, this link describes a registry edit that turns off a great deal of Cortana functionality, leaving the process running so that search still works. https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/turn-cortana-windows-10