This post is about the Windows 10 Start Menu Corruption BS ….

I am going to talk about something that most users of Windows 10 have not run into yet, so most will probably be inclined to just write this post off as irrelevant to them .. Just wait !!

This post is about the Windows 10 Start Menu Corruption PROBLEM.

It WILL come to you some day – unless Microsoft somehow finds a way to fix this most pernicious of bugs in their Flagship operating system !  Which they have failed to do in over a year (?).  So please read on….

I just recently decided that it was time to move my world to Windows 10 finally – for real. For a week I just loved the new feel and the general environment.  Then suddenly my Start Menu stopped working and a dialog came up to the effect that my Start menu was corrupted and when you reboot it will “probably fix it” – or words to that effect.  So I restarted and it was the exact same… I could no longer use my Start menu .. it was pooched !!

So I searched the Internet and I found thousands and thousands of inquiries about this same exact issue and the usual thousands of mostly useless “fixes” posted by either well-meaning idiots or self-promoting a-holes.  Frankly while the apparently well-documented solutions do seem to work INITIALLY they do not tell you that within hours or days at most the problem will happen yet again and despite all your efforts, while you might get it back … it will happen again once it starts happening.

It appears to me that this issue cropped up after I customized the “Tiles” on my Start Menu to move my favourite apps front and centre.  It also in the end appears that the most likely ultimate solution is to reinstall Windows 10 from scratch and then DO NOT EDIT YOUR START MENU !!  Although this is only my guess because I just couldn’t bring myself to do that.

Instead I found a free download called “Classic Shell” ( http://www.classicshell.net/ ), installed it from my desktop and up came a very slick looking solution that not only gives me a Start menu that looks and works exactly like the one in Windows 7 (which I can live with) , but one that seems to work and work and work !

I have found zero complaints about Classic Shell out there, nothing but praise.  I have no idea why this is a free app … but I guess that’s not my problem.  But it seems to work for me.  We’ll see.

So what possible way can Microsoft explain why some freeware solution seems to be the only way to reliably resolve an bug in their operation system that has been known for over a year?  I just ran Windows update and am running Version 1511 OS Build 10586.218 which was installed from Windows Update this very morning … And the Native Start Menu does not work .. So I installed Classic Shell.

What bothers me is that I have seen zero response from Microsoft on this … it makes me think that Microsoft is unable to solve this issue themselves and have so little shame that they can’t even admit it… And yet how come some third-party startup has a solution and not the maker of the product itself?

This makes me nervous about everything Microsoft is up to with their never-ending incessant upgrades of all their software all the time !!  How can anyone make any decisions on Microsoft products if they never stand still long enough to be assessed? Further, if they don’t stay still long enough for us to actual implement solutions and for the clients to actually get some value out of them and what happens when inevitably Microsoft breaks something in one of these iterations (and they are going to) ?  How can these new incremental changes possibly be adequately tested before they ship… ?  Oh I get it .. we’re ALL BETA Testers now …  But sadly it looks more like we’re all ALPHA Testers instead.   

How can anyone make any decisions to implement serious solutions with this tech in this environment of a constantly moving floor?   What does this Start Menu bug say about how Microsoft is going to respond to this inevitability ?  I guess as long as only a few people are left out to swing in the wind then they’ll just look the other way.  Where is that going to leave Microsoft when people just simply stay away?

Where does that leave us all?

Dick