Fix: Windows 10/11 Start Menu Not Working After Update

You installed a Windows update, rebooted, and now the Start menu does nothing. You click it and nothing happens. You press the Windows key and nothing happens. Sometimes you get a dialog that says Critical Error – Your Start Menu Isn't Working. We'll try to fix it the next time you sign in. You sign in again. Same thing.

This isn't your fault, and it's not a hardware problem. It's a corrupted registration of the StartMenuExperienceHost package. Windows 10 22H2 and Windows 11 23H2 both hit this after cumulative updates, and it shows up most often on machines where an update failed halfway, or where a third-party Start menu replacement (StartAllBack, Open-Shell, Classic Shell) was installed before the update ran.

Work through these fixes in order. Don't skip ahead — the first one solves it about 80% of the time.

Cause 1: The StartMenuExperienceHost package lost its registration

The Start menu is a UWP app called Microsoft.Windows.StartMenuExperienceHost. When an update touches its package files but the registration in the current user's profile doesn't get updated to match, the app can't launch. You get the critical error, or you get silence.

The fix is to re-register the package in PowerShell. Here's how.

1. Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc to open Task Manager. You're using this because the Start menu is dead — you can't right-click it to launch anything.
2. Click File in the top-left, then Run new task.
3. In the box, type powershell and check Create this task with administrative privileges. Click OK. A blue PowerShell window opens. After clicking OK, you should see a prompt starting with PS C:\Windows\system32>. If you see a red error about permissions, you didn't tick the checkbox — close it and repeat.
4. Paste this command and press Enter:

Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers -Name Microsoft.Windows.StartMenuExperienceHost | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml" -Verbose}

You'll see some yellow verbose output scrolling past. That's normal. You're looking for the word Deployment succeeded near the end. If you see Deployment failed with an error code, jump to Cause 3 below instead of retrying this.

While you're still in that PowerShell window, run this one too — it fixes the search bar, which usually breaks at the same time:

Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers -Name Microsoft.Windows.Cortana | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml" -Verbose}

Close Task Manager and PowerShell. Sign out and sign back in. The Start menu should open in about 1–2 seconds after the desktop loads — slightly slower than normal on the first click, then back to normal.

If your InstallLocation comes back blank and the command errors out, the package files are gone from disk. Skip to Cause 3.

Cause 2: A pending update is blocking the shell from loading

Windows sometimes finishes the file copy part of an update but never completes the commit stage. The Start menu waits on a component that never arrives. You'll notice the machine also feels sluggish at login, and Settings might hang when you open Update & Security.

To clear a stuck update:

1. Open an elevated PowerShell the same way you did above.
2. Stop the update services:

net stop wuauserv
net stop bits
net stop cryptsvc

After each stop command, you should see The service was stopped successfully. If a service says it isn't started, that's fine — keep going.

3. Rename the update cache folders so Windows rebuilds them:

ren C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution SoftwareDistribution.old
ren C:\Windows\System32\catroot2 catroot2.old

4. Restart the services:

net start wuauserv
net start bits
net start cryptsvc

5. Reboot. Then open Settings → Windows Update and click Check for updates. Windows will re-download the pending update from scratch — this can take 10–30 minutes depending on your connection. Let it finish and reboot when it asks.

The Start menu usually comes back after the second reboot. Don't test it right after the first one; the update needs to fully commit.

Cause 3: The user profile's Start layout database is corrupt

Sometimes the package is fine but the per-user Start layout database — DefaultLayouts.xml and the TileDataLayer folder — got scrambled by the update. This is more common on machines that have upgraded from Windows 10 to Windows 11 in place. You get the critical error every single sign-in, no matter how many times you re-register the package.

Here's the fix. You'll lose your pinned tiles but keep all your files and apps.

1. Open an elevated PowerShell from Task Manager (same method as Cause 1).
2. Stop the shell experience host processes:

Get-Process StartMenuExperienceHost,SearchHost,SearchApp,ShellExperienceHost -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | Stop-Process -Force

3. Delete the corrupt tile database folder for your profile:

Remove-Item "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Packages\Microsoft.Windows.StartMenuExperienceHost_cw5n1h2txyewy\LocalState\*" -Recurse -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

4. Reboot. When you sign back in, Windows rebuilds the Start menu layout from scratch. You should see a fresh Start menu with default pins. Click it — it should open instantly.

If it still fails after this, the last resort is what Microsoft support will walk you through anyway: create a new local user account in Settings → Accounts → Other users, sign into it, and confirm the Start menu works there. If it does, your original profile is damaged beyond a quick repair, and the cleanest path is to migrate your data to the new account. Yes, it's annoying. No, there's no better shortcut.

What won't help (skip these)

• Running sfc /scannow. It'll fix system files, but the Start menu issue lives in per-user package registration, which sfc doesn't touch. You'll waste 15 minutes for nothing.
• System Restore. On machines that got this error from a cumulative update, rolling back often breaks other things because Windows Update re-applies the update on next check.
• Rebooting repeatedly. If three reboots didn't fix it, a fourth won't either.
• Third-party "Start menu repair" tools. Most just run the same PowerShell command you just ran, wrapped in an installer.

Quick reference