Windows 10 Start Menu and Tray icons issues not fixed.

[davenz]

Hi team. I have used the pro version of Windows Repair and had a good success rate with it over the past 6 months since purchasing a license. However, the other day I had a machine in that defied all attempts at repair and I ended up archiving, formatting and reinstalling.

The history of the machine is it is a 2-year old machine running a 64-bit version of Windows 10 home upgraded from Windows 8.1 during the great giveaway. After a failed update (according to the client) the box booted but the start menu and pop-ups invoked by clicking on the volume control, network icon or other Windows-based tray apps would not show. MS Office was also buggered, with an error dialogue showing when clicking the Word (2013) or Excel shortcuts in the taskbar that a dll was missing, corrupted or not designed to run on this version of Windows. The dlls files in question (two) were present but were 0 bytes, so obviously due to be overwritten by the update (perhaps) but not replaced for whatever reason. Replacing these dlls from a known-good machine (mine) running the same version of Windows and Office threw up the same errors.

I tried the four 'usual' repairs for Windows 8/10 start menu breaking but none worked (the DISM fix and the Get app fix run in PowerShell, creating a new user profile and resetting certain registry key permissions). As a last resort I ran Windows Repair, including a SFC and pre-scan variables scans  (which found errors and repaired them) except in the case of SFC it found errors in the files but was unable to replace them, which turns out to be a common symptom that many others had with Windows 10 start menu problems.

I thought I'd report this here as like I said, I've had good results in the past with start menu errors running Windows Repair but this time, after two repair runs (I tried another one after some other changes to the OS) I had no luck. Hence I'm very happy with the software and it is a very useful tool for me and worth five times the cost. It just didn't help in this case.

Cheers,

Dave

[Boggin]

When sfc /scannow reports it is unable to repair some files then copy & paste this cmd to the prompt and press enter -

findstr /c:"[SR]" %windir%\Logs\CBS\CBS.log > %userprofile%\Desktop\sfcdetails.txt

This will put an icon onto the desktop which when double clicked will open the CBS log in Notepad with what it could and couldn't repair.

Sometimes SFCFix.exe which is a 3rd party program, can repair where the Windows cannot.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/sfcfix.html

However, an antimalware scan should be done first and the program should be run straight after a sfc /scannow as the CBS log can be volatile.

If SFCFix.exe still reports corruption then help can be found at www.sysnative.com forum, but sometimes a repair install can be the only solution.

A repair install doesn't affect installed programs or personal stuff.

[davenz]

@Boggin, thanks for the information, it is much appreciated. I should also have added that this machine would also not repair install due to an error that was apparently related to different input languages or regional data between the disk/ISO I was using for repairs and the original image put on the machine at HP. No matter what resolve I tried it would not repair install (the option to choose what to keep was preset to 'None' and no other option was available) and I certainly wanted to keep the data. It got to the point I'd spent to many hours on this thing and it fought me every step of the way and so an archive/install was the only feasible repair option left.

If there is a next time I hit the SFC wall I'll try that other fix you suggested (SFC never has worked for me in 17 years of fixing computers to be honest, which is why I almost never use it - I only tried it recently due to the suggestion to pre-scan before repairs in Windows Repair (and in those times it has not fixed anything either) so it has limited value for me as a repair tool.

Thanks again for the info and all the best.

[Boggin]

You can also boot up with the install disk to navigate to the Recovery Environment by changing/confirm the Time and currency format - Next - then clicking on Repair your Computer - Troubleshoot - Command Prompt and enter bcdedit |find "osdevice" and then enter this cmd where X=the partition letter.

sfc /scannow /offbootdir=X:\ /offwindir=X:\Windows

This will check and repair the file system against the incorrupt install disk.

For clarity that is a Pipe symbol before find in the bcdedit cmd and as you probably know, is the uppercase of \ and there is a space before each /

The reason it's best to run the bcdedit cmd first  is because in that mode it doesn't always see the volume in C:

Enter exit to close the cmd window when done and then you can choose what you want do from the options.