[1803, au] Start Menu list populating inconsistently

[TBFC]

Hi all,

 

Over the past week we've had reports from staff members getting incomplete Start Menus. Unfortunately, both the frequency of occurrences and the actual effects are inconsistent.

We've been using the same method for Start Menus for over a year now.

 

Staff members use roaming profiles, with all of AppData/Local denied for roaming.

The Start Menu directory is copied to C:\Win10StartMenu\, and redirected to that location via GPO. The reason for this is that laptops taken off-site were losing the start menu.

 

The issue we are seeing is, for some users, the Start Menu does not contain all the folders and shortcuts it should. They will only have folders down to a certain level (eg: They'll have Adobe Creative Cloud, Internet Browsers, but not Microsoft Office or Utilities). However, the directory where the shortcuts are stored does contain all of the shortcuts.

Normally, we can add a shortcut to the C:\Win10Start Menu, then the Start Menu picks it up instantly. This is now not the case.

 

We do have an issue where, on the second login, the Start Menu list does not populate at all. The 'fix' is to remove the user's ntuser.dat from the server, after which they work normally. This doesn't resolve the issue.

We are not seeing this issue with our Student or Exam accounts, which use mandatory and local profiles respectively.

Removing the local and server profile does not resolve the issue.

I have once seen a series of command windows appear, saying "Path cannot be found" (or similar), before disappearing. Changing the Start Menu redirection to point at the server rather than local (to try and avoid a clash between copying and reading) does not resolve the issue.

There don't seem to be any entries in Windows Logs that relate to the issue.

 

Unfortunately we can't do rapid testing, due to the intermittent nature of the issue, so any help would be appreciated.

Many thanks!