Has anyone got the Windows 10 Start Menu working reliably WITHOUT using Classic Shell

[mullet_man]

@Katy

 

Your student setup is almost identical to mine expect for we are on 1607, have your student start menu's always opened and you never experienced a non-opening menu?

 

Am going to take a closer look when I've got five minutes (which is never) as I find logging in as an admin user still doesn't allow the start menu to open, so this has led me to believe its machine issue rather than user profile issue. I might see if removing all profiles from the machine might fix it? Who knows.

 

The admin user doesn't have a set start menu and uses a local one so that makes me believe it's machine related too.

 

Maybe the new update in April might fix the issues!

[Katy]

@mullet_man

Not seen a broken student start menu myself, but it's possible that they have been breaking but nobody has reported it. I've only experienced it myself with my user account and my test staff accounts, which all use roaming profile. Never had the problem with an admin account (which like yours has no config and just uses the local machine) although this is on 1511. You've crushed my hopes for a shift to 1607 to escape the crap start menu reliability!

[mullet_man]

@Katy I think it might be not working on more than is reported as the most used icons are on the desktop and a non working start menu can be worked around.

 

I'd definitely skip this build if I were you with the new build scheduled for April its only 3 months away.

 

I never rolled out 1511 for students but did some testing but I found the start menu was much more responsive. 1607 has been a nightmare if am honest, major issues with updates and WSUS not working from day 1 and disappearing icons and random errors happening for the first few weeks until updates were released to fix the issues.

 

If I ever get that five mins I'll report my findings on the start menu.

Edited January 12, 2017 by mullet_man

[timbo343]

We have custom start menu XMLs on a share that everyone can access (read access). We have one for students and one for staff, they both work without any issues at the moment. Students have mandatory profiles and staff have roaming. When we moved over to Windows 10 in summer we rolled out LTSB2015 to all machines. We started to see more problems with student machines than staff machines and yep, on some machines the start menu wouldn't work - some staff machines would play up but staff arent logging on and off as often like students do so decided to tackle the student machines.

 

We weren't sure what was causing the problems with LTSB2015, it could have been the way i setup the mandatory profile for students - this was a sticking point when we were testing windows 10 but managed to find a way round it. Student machines are now on LTSB2016 with a new V6 mandatory profile. Setting up a V6 profile was a doddle and very much like creating a mandatory profile back in the old days.

 

Staff machines are still on LTSB2015 and every now and then staff start menus (the icons) do break but a reset of their profiles seems to fix it.

 

Im not sure if its related but we've blocked onedrivesetup.exe from running via app locker and this seems to have stopped a lot of the problems. When students reported start menus not working, i quickly remoted on the eventviewer of that machine and looked to see what was erroring. 9/10 times the eventviewer reported an APPID which referenced an App in the registry. We have all sorts of hacks to the registry, services that are stopped and EXEs that are blocked from running as there's so much crap on windows 10 that we don't need.

[LeMarchand]

Thanks @LeMarchand

 

That's essentially what I'm doing, with limited success. I just wondered if I might be having a similar issue with a GPO....

@jmak.

 

I'm not 100% certain this is fixed, but I have got the "baked in" menu displaying and inviolate. (Still no luck with the XML method!)

 

Only 2 User GPOs were different for working and non-working peeps, and I narrowed it down to it being the main Student Policy and further to the 2 highlighted settings. I set them to "not configured", but I didn't really understand what they controlled. (They were in User>Admin>Start Menu and IIRC the bulk of the others were W7 "tidy ups").

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]40682[/ATTACH]

 

Did this by creating a copy of the Student Policy that the test pupil got instead of the real one. Once those bits were reconfigured it worked. However removing them from the main policy had no effect so I'm guessing that there was something else hidden in there that wasn't in the copy.

 

The bad news: I'm guessing the hidden bit covered preventing the use of Win + R...

 

It's definitely somewhere in that policy - just not where I thought!

Edited January 13, 2017 by LeMarchand

[Michael]

I respect all you guys/girls trying to get this working reliably/consistently. Keep up the good work as one of us will no doubt solve it.

 

The Start Menu no show issue appears on all builds to date after a time, so I can only conclude it's profile, App corruption or possibly even registry related, as others have pointed out a re-image is the only solution to resolve it.

 

This is why (at the time), with some reluctance I went down the Classic Shell route and I very rarely have issues with users navigating the Start Menu. Because it's a separate application to the core OS, even on workstations where Apps become corrupt, the Start Menu (Classic Shell), is still functional.

 

I'm of the opinion this is why the results are incredibly varied, as other XML options (such as controlling Explorer file extensions), works consistently/reliably, so the only difference between this and the Start Menu is the Apps themselves. The XML file's pointing to numerous Apps and if these Apps are corrupt/missing, it may explain the random behaviour of Windows 10's Start Menu.

[jmak]

I respect all you guys/girls trying to get this working reliably/consistently. Keep up the good work as one of us will no doubt solve it.

 

The main reason I'm persevering is that over half of our devices have touch screens, so the interface is more suitable. Otherwise I'd probably bail out, because it's far more difficult and unreliable than reasonable for a product created for businesses/enterprises.

[mullet_man]

I managed to find a few mins to take a look at a student PC where the start menu wasn't working.

 

I found that the issue isn't just start menu related but all modern apps just won't open, so notification centre doesn't open, settings app, clicking on the network icon on the task bar doesn't show the connected domain.

 

It's definitely OS related, and I think I can rule out corruption of profiles as nothing works for the local admin user.

 

I didn't wade through the event viewer like I should have because I needed to get the pc working so had to reimage it in the end.

 

Can someone else who has issues with the start menu before they reimage the machine see if non of the modern apps/settings will open id be interested to see if it's the same elsewhere.

 

We've also been using Windows 10 with staff (rolling out slowly but got well over 30 staff laptops done) and never ever seen this issue with a start menu.

[Katy]

I run a script that removes all the modern apps when the PC is imaged but will have a go with the few that can't be removed (Settings) if I remember next time I've got one reported.

[mullet_man]

Katy I do the same every app that can be removed is during the deployment process using a powershell script. I also use app locker to block the last few that can't be deleted.

 

It crossed my mind it could be related to both the above but it's not happening on every machine.

[Katy]

Thinking about it now, it could be machine and user related... I'e had it where user A's start menu is broken on every PC they go to, but mine works fine on all but the first one they used - so perhaps a specific machine has the problem and as people with roaming profiles log on/off the machine it leaves something in their profile which then causes the issue to appear to be user related when they roam...

 

Most annoying part is that this never happened once when I was testing before deployment, if it had I would have left everything running 8.1 which had no issues at all.

[mullet_man]

We don't have roaming profiles here. All local with redirected folders.

 

My issue is definitely machine related and not profile.

[Michael]

I managed to find a few mins to take a look at a student PC where the start menu wasn't working.

 

I found that the issue isn't just start menu related but all modern apps just won't open, so notification centre doesn't open, settings app, clicking on the network icon on the task bar doesn't show the connected domain.

 

It's definitely OS related, and I think I can rule out corruption of profiles as nothing works for the local admin user.

 

I didn't wade through the event viewer like I should have because I needed to get the pc working so had to reimage it in the end.

 

Can someone else who has issues with the start menu before they reimage the machine see if non of the modern apps/settings will open id be interested to see if it's the same elsewhere.

 

We've also been using Windows 10 with staff (rolling out slowly but got well over 30 staff laptops done) and never ever seen this issue with a start menu.

 

I can confirm that's the exact behaviour I've seen too - this is why I think my theory holds some water; broken Start Menu and corrupt Apps, but absolutely no idea why it happens. Microsoft clearly have their head in the sand on this issue unfortunately!

[Chuckster]

I managed to find a few mins to take a look at a student PC where the start menu wasn't working.

 

I found that the issue isn't just start menu related but all modern apps just won't open, so notification centre doesn't open, settings app, clicking on the network icon on the task bar doesn't show the connected domain.

 

It's definitely OS related, and I think I can rule out corruption of profiles as nothing works for the local admin user.

 

I didn't wade through the event viewer like I should have because I needed to get the pc working so had to reimage it in the end.

 

Can someone else who has issues with the start menu before they reimage the machine see if non of the modern apps/settings will open id be interested to see if it's the same elsewhere.

 

We've also been using Windows 10 with staff (rolling out slowly but got well over 30 staff laptops done) and never ever seen this issue with a start menu.

 

This happened exactly to me after patch Tuesday. Admittedly it only affected half a dozen workstations while the rest appeared to function normal. Rather than sit and investigate the issue at hand I took the step of re-imaging the affected workstations.

 

Windows 10 is not fit for purpose.

 

The other issue is explorer.exe slowing everything down, e.g. folder contents taking an age to load. Restarting the explorer.exe immediately cures this until 30 mins later the problem resurfaces.

[mullet_man]

I can confirm that's the exact behaviour I've seen too - this is why I think my theory holds some water; broken Start Menu and corrupt Apps, but absolutely no idea why it happens. Microsoft clearly have their head in the sand on this issue unfortunately!

 

Am glad its not just me then. Am not sure why its isolated to student devices for me but could be due to the way they are treated e.g. power being pulled out rather than shutting down and this is causing some corruption to Windows.

 

Lets hope the new update limits this issue.

[LeMarchand]

@jmak.

 

I'm not 100% certain this is fixed, but I have got the "baked in" menu displaying and inviolate. (Still no luck with the XML method!)

 

Only 2 User GPOs were different for working and non-working peeps, and I narrowed it down to it being the main Student Policy and further to the 2 highlighted settings. I set them to "not configured", but I didn't really understand what they controlled. (They were in User>Admin>Start Menu and IIRC the bulk of the others were W7 "tidy ups").

 

Did this by creating a copy of the Student Policy that the test pupil got instead of the real one. Once those bits were reconfigured it worked. However removing them from the main policy had no effect so I'm guessing that there was something else hidden in there that wasn't in the copy.

 

The bad news: I'm guessing the hidden bit covered preventing the use of Win + R...

 

It's definitely somewhere in that policy - just not where I thought!

 

OK, it seems (so far!) to have been the "Remove common program groups from Start Menu" which (if enabled) prevents anything except what's in the user-specific Start Menu folder from showing.

 

Still no luck with the XML method and for some reason my nice icons for the folders aren't showing on some users, but at least it's just a cosmetic problem. I do need to make a few tweaks to the base image to satisfy my OCD though.

[mullet_man]

Still seeing issues with no modern apps working, had to log on a machine in IT and the start menu didn't work.

 

I've got a feeling it's affecting a lot of machines, kids are just getting round it using the desktop shortcuts.

 

Just really annoying as it took me bloody ages to get my start menu working right.

[timbo343]

Is there anything showing in the event viewer?

 

I spent thursday night testing our start menus in 2 it rooms with impero. We have 32 machines in each room, i logged the machines in with our 2010 teat account and about 2 / 3 machines had a problem with the start menu / task bar.

 

We have papercut that runs for all users, if this didnt show i knew the start menu wouldnt work.

 

Looking in the eventviewer, i saw lots of DCOM errors hay affected 6 different AppIDs.

 

Looking in the registry i found the AppIDs, took ownership of them and deleted them. Some of them are stubbon and will post which ones are affecting the systems.

 

A restart of the machine gets rid of the problem however the issue is so random. One time a machine will work, give it a restart and login with the same user and the problem will occur.

[Arthur]

OK, it seems (so far!) to have been the "Remove common program groups from Start Menu" which (if enabled) prevents anything except what's in the user-specific Start Menu folder from showing.

The reason why that happens is mentioned below (along with some other gotchas). It makes sense when you think about it.

 

Customizing the Windows 10 Start Menu for Enterprises

 

Early testing showed a few other important things:

 

• If there are any errors in the XML, Windows will ignore it entirely and revert to the user’s prior start menu, whether that was a previously valid custom one, or the default out-of-box start menu.
   
   
  
• Adding comments to the XML likewise results in the start layout being ignored. (This in fairness is mentioned in the MS documentation).
  

After a lot of further testing, trial, and error, we’ve determined the following:

 

• You can only pin items that are present in "All Apps".
   
   
  
• The "All Apps" database is generated only at boot-up, and is generated from the items found in the user’s profile plus the "all users" profile, in these two location:
  

  %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\
  %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\

  
   
  

• There is clearly some logic that causes the database to be rebuilt when a new program is installed, but that does not seem to be exposed at all to the end user, so for all practical purposes if you want to add an item to "all apps" programmatically, it requires a reboot after adding the item to one of the above paths.
   
   
  
• As mentioned earlier, if an item that is not found in the "all apps" database is pinned to a custom start menu layout, the pin will disappear, never to be seen again without deleting the user’s profile.
   
   
  
• Directly linking to EXEs is not reliable. It’s not clear why this is, but it’s better to pin a shortcut to the EXE. To clarify, if you want to pin an EXE, you should instead create a shortcut to that EXE, get the shortcut in “all apps” and then pin that shortcut to the start menu.
   
   
  
• Attempting to pin a path does not appear to work across users. It’s not clear why this is. I resorted to a very convoluted method: writing a short C# app that opened the desired path, then linking to a shortcut to that EXE. It’s a crazy method but the only way I could get to consistently work.
   
   
  
• The link to "Microsoft.InternetExplorer.Default" works inconsistently as well. I found it better to create a shortcut to IE and pin that to the start menu.
   
   
  
• Here’s a very strange one... If you redirect the start menu (i.e. the pre-Win 10 way), items pinned to the Win 10 start menu are unreliable. Win 10 sometimes seems to take the shortcut from the local "all apps" and other times from the redirected start menu. You must turn off redirection for Win 10 devices to reliably use the customized start menu layouts.
   
   
  
• You must also disable the group policy "Remove common program groups from Start Menu", otherwise the "all users" profile items will not be loaded into the user's all apps database, resulting in missing pins.
  

There are a lot of moving pieces here, but by following the above we’ve been able to create a custom start menu layout that works the way we need it to. Hope this helps!

 

Still no luck with the XML method

Are there any errors or in your XML file? Have you redirected the Start Menu (see above)?

 

Some things work differently in Windows 10 so it's probably a good idea to start from scratch with your GPOs instead of reusing those from Windows 7 (or earlier).

Edited January 22, 2017 by Arthur

[timbo343]

As mentioned, here are the DCOM errors i get on 1 / 2 random machines...

 

Unable to start a DCOM Server: {1A1F4206-0688-4E7F-BE03-D82EC69DF9A5}. The error:

"5"

Happened while starting this command:

C:\windows\System32\mobsync.exe -Embedding

This AppID links to Sync Centre Control

 

The server {1A1F4206-0688-4E7F-BE03-D82EC69DF9A5} did not register with DCOM within the required timeout.

 

The server {A463FCB9-6B1C-4E0D-A80B-A2CA7999E25D} did not register with DCOM within the required timeout.

This AppID / CLSID links to SmartScreen

 

The server {D63B10C5-BB46-4990-A94F-E40B9D520160} did not register with DCOM within the required timeout.

This AppID links to Runtime Broker

 

The server {4AA0A5C4-1B9B-4F2E-99D7-99C6AEC83474} did not register with DCOM within the required timeout.

This AppID links to Setting Sync Task

 

I'd love to know how to stop these errors from affecting our machines.

Edited January 23, 2017 by timbo343

[mullet_man]

If I get five mins this week I'll have a look at a machines event log and see what errors we are getting on the ones with faulty modern apps/start menu.

[timbo343]

Right, i *may* have found to stop the start menu and task bar from crashing.

 

After a lot of testing with a student test account in 5 IT rooms of 32 machines i think ive got to the bottom of the start menu / task bar issue.

 

The issue we were facing was, the same user 2010 logged into 32 machines at the same time via Impero. About 30 of the machines either displayed the papercut client or the start menu was clickable (left & Right click). There were maybe 2 or 3 machines which didnt show the papercut client or the start menu wasnt clickable.

 

Looking in the Eventvwr logs i found a few AppID and DCOM errors which all pointed to SYnc Centre or similar.

 

When i restarted the machines, a different 2 or 3 machines wouldnt work with the same issues and same AppID and DCOM errors.

 

So, after a bit of research, i tried deleting the AppIDs, this didnt have any affect on the issue. I then tried to disable the CDPUserSvc and CSC service. Ont he web, no one knows what these services do so i stopped them via a reg hack. Im glad to say this stopped some errors in the eventvwr.

 

Still getting the DCOM and AppID errors, i decided to put an AppLocker policy in place to block EVERYONE from running mobsync.exe even though i have offline files disabled - - - It turns out this is the issue.

 

It takes a while for the machines to update the policy but so far out of 5 IT rooms running 32 machines, all log on with a few test users and all get the papercut client and a clickable start menu.

 

I will try these machines again in the morning but the fixes ive put in place are:

 

* Add mobsync.exe to an AppLocker policy setting EVERYONE to DENY.

 

* In Computer Config \ System \ Group Policy

---> Specify Start up policy Processing wait time = 60 seconds

---> Specify Workplace connectivity wait time for policy = 60 Seconds

 

* Registry setting:

---> HKLM \ System \ CurrentControlSet \ Services \ CDPUserSvc ---- Start = 0x4

---> HKLM \ System \ CurrentControlSet \ Services \ CSC ---- Start = 0x4

Edited January 23, 2017 by timbo343

[mullet_man]

I've had a quick look at the event log on a faulty machine, seeing DCOM errors and AppID errors.

 

Getting iD 10 errors for Windows.Shellexperiencehost and controlpanel as well as 214 errors

 

All modern apps are broken basically.

 

I'll give the mobsync a try now but not sure if I block that via applocker.

[Arthur]

All modern apps are broken basically.

That does sound like an AppLocker issue (see video below starting from

). Are you able to move a PC into a different OU that doesn't have any AppLocker policies applying to it to test?

 

[timbo343]

I've had a quick look at the event log on a faulty machine, seeing DCOM errors and AppID errors.

 

Getting iD 10 errors for Windows.Shellexperiencehost and controlpanel as well as 214 errors

 

All modern apps are broken basically.

 

I'll give the mobsync a try now but not sure if I block that via applocker.

Block it by applocker but im not sure if it will help you as it sounds like you have bigger things to deal with.

 

To update my *working* post, we still had a few machines fail with the startmenu / taskbar.

 

Theres another thread regarding GP scripts not working which kinda works in conjunction with this issue, that being windows 10 is just crap on a domain.

 

Ive since made 2 more services set to automatic and out the blue 4 of te 5 suites all came on with no problems however 3 of the 5 we cannot ping or remote file explore but they are definately on the network, other than that nothing else has changed.