Start menu won't work in one of my profiles

[MichaelT]

I have an HP Pavilion DV7-2173cl laptop which I upgraded to windows 10 some months ago. After upgrade it showed 2 profiles which most worked fine. About 5 days ago I performed an upgrade on one of my programs. Instead of performing a reboot I did something else. I was tired of having to go from Microsoft edge to IE. In my start menu there was a listing for IE which I dragged over to the task bar and restarted. Things looked ok but when I chose IE in the task bar it would open Citrix Receiver instead. A that point I am not exactly sure of events. I either tried to open the start menu or remove the IE icon but no matter what I could not open the start menu and in fact got an error message that said there was a problem with the start menu and it would bring me back to the sign in screen to chose another account. After looking on line and asking for Microsoft support I received some instructions as follows.

Type in CMD Admin

netsh trace start persistent=yes capture=yes tracefile=c:\temp\nettrace-boot.etl"


Type in Powershel ISE

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


If issue persists:

Open an Administrator CMD window. If you can't find a way, use these steps:

Press CTRL+Shift+ESC to open Task Manager.

Click File > Run New Task

Make sure you have a check mark beside "Create this task with administrative privileges"

Type CMD

Type the following commands at the CMD prompt:

dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth

sfc /scannnow

If EITHER command does not show a good outcome, we need to stop and repair Windows. We have 3 options:

Go Back: If there are other significant issues, or if the customer is not sure of using Windows 10, Go Back.

The plan from there will be to clean up the configuration to prepare for an upgrade.

Reset: If possible, remove Antivirus/Sec Software and perform a Reset (keeping data and settings). Customers will need to

reinstall apps with this option.

In-Place Upgrade: If the customer is unwilling, we can try uninstalling the Antivirus/Sec Software and try an in-place upgrade.

We should set expectation.

If the above commands both completed and show no remaining issues, run these commands:

powershell

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

Check to be sure this command ran, showed a blue progress indicator and then returns to the prompt.

If you see a red error, then the command may have been typed or pasted incorrectly, or there may be a larger problem with

Windows 10. Try again.

Check to see if the issue is resolved.

If not, restart the PC.In this case try as a new administrator user account.

If the new user also fails, go up to the steps for "3. If EITHER command does not show." above. We need to repair Windows.

I did not have a problem with
dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth


sfc /scannnow

The process did not solve the problem but PowerShell provided numerous errors.

I did generate a new user account with administrative rights and can use it; however, the profile with the problem has all my working files an links to saved data.

Does anyone have any other suggestions? Microsoft support gave up saying it was a incompatibility between my laptop and Windows 10. I have 2 working profiles and think the problem occurred when I pined IE to the task bar from the start menu.

Note that my other computer doesn't have IE in the start menu

 

[davehc]

I would just like to drag this back to your own comments at the start of your post. I am certain this can be sorted.
Maybe the MS answer moderator, did not read your problem correctly, and took you through some unneeded hoops, creating problems which were not there in the initial phase.
.
First, are you able to remove the IE icon from the taskbar,? If so, do that.

Open the task manager and look in the startup tab. If there are any programs there, referring to Citrix, disable them. Hopefully this will be temporary.

Reboot and see if you can now open the start menu.

If so, open "All Apps" and scroll down to Windows Accessories. There you will see the Internet explorer. Right click it and Pin to the Taskbar.

If you have been successful, so far, right click the start icon and select the Control Panel. Open the "default Programs" and then "Set your default programs"
Scroll down to Internet Explorer and make it your default.

 

[Trouble]

IF, you cannot find any relief to the problem at hand, then you can always recover your old profile items into your new profile that you are using including your desktop (icons and shortcuts) as well as your pictures, documents, music, videos, etc., etc.
The process is pretty straight forward and requires only a third admin user to facilitate the task, as you cannot be logged in, to the profile you are copying from nor the profile you are copying to.
AND avoid attempting to copy anything (file or folder, beginning with nt).
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/fix-corrupted-user-profile#1TC=windows-7
Use the steps for Windows 7. The process remains pretty much the same with Windows 10.

 

[MichaelT]

I can not unpin anything in the task bar in the bad profile. I could disable stuff from the task manager

 

[MichaelT]

BTW when I first pinned the IE to the task bar before the problem, I did not find it in Windows Accessories. I found it as a separate item under the "Is". When I couldn't get rid of it from the task bar, I went to control panel-programs and features" and deleted it there. But I found it again under programs-Internet explorer and repined from there and it did work. Thanks for the tip about recovery of a corrupt profile. I will look into it later today

 

[MichaelT]

I used the technique suggested by http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/fix-corrupted-user-profile#1TC=windows-7 That profile has even less functionality then the one that was a problem before. I can not do a right or left click to the start button

 

[Trouble]

That profile has even less functionality then the one that was a problem before

I was under the impression that you had a perfectly functioning alternative User Profile that you could use as a target to copy over your problem profile items into.
Copying from one problem profile to a second problem profile won't accomplish much.

Are you suggesting that the working alternate profile was fine, until you copied over you old stuff into it?
IF so, then that might suggest that there might be some items in your problem profile that may be infected with malware.

Generally speaking simply copying the contents of C:\Users\OldProfile\Documents into C:\Users\NewProfile\Documents would and should not result in corrupting the good (NewProfile), likewise the contents of the other containers, like Desktop, Favorites, Music, Pictures, Videos, etc., etc.

So... I can't explain what has happened nor what you are experiencing if I am interpreting you correctly.
My suggestion would be to.....
Do it again.
Create a new user.
Log off as you and log on as the new user.
Test the new user profile, make sure that you can do everything you would typically expect to do. Run Windows updates, open the Store, check for Store updates, open a browser, surf the web, generally just work with the new profile for a day or so. Reboot the system a couple times make sure that the new profile is functioning properly in all respects.
Then, after you've thoroughly tested the new profile, copy over the items from the old profile and see how it goes.

 

[MichaelT]

I have moved a few things out of my old profile that I don't use and stored that stuff on a different drive. I expect that the problem is not with the documents folder or my downloads folder. The problem may be with the desktop folder or with the appdata folder perhaps in the roaming folder

 

[Trouble]

That may be a pretty good assumption.
The AppData folder especially AppData\Local\Temp seems to collect a fair bit of rubbish.

 

[cor135]

Found a solution to the start menu not opening that I haven't seen in any forum; make sure the firewall is on though services. Don't know how it works but it did. We have roaming profiles and when we would deploy new boxes everything was fine at first and then one by one their start menu became inaccessible. Hope this helps!

 

[MichaelT]

I have generated a new profile that contains most of the features of the one that didn't work. I didn't copy everything. Namely I didn't copy the start folder from the old appsdat/local/windows/start nor some of the packages. I think the effect is that there is a faster startup since not as many things going on.

One mistake that I made in my old attempt was that I did indeed copy all the ntuser stuff. I didn't see it until my second attempt at unchecking the box for the hidden systems files (I forgot to use the apply button)

Now when I go back and look at the ntuser.dat file in the profile that doesn't allow the start button to function, I find that that file is 53MB in size. For other profiles on my computer that largest ntuser.dat file is no larger than 2.5MB. I think the ntuser.dat file is corrupted in that profile.

Your thoughts.

Mike