This post shows students and new users steps to reset or repair the Start Menu button when using Windows 11 to resolve issues where it won’t open, stops working, or hangs. The Start button is one of the most clicked areas in Windows 11. It is a pathway to get to other areas and open other apps in Windows.
The Start menu is where you’ll also find your Pinned apps, All apps, and Recommended apps (frequently accessed apps and settings in Windows 11).
The Start menu is a modern or Universal Windows Platform (UWP) menu app. UWP apps can be used across all compatible Microsoft Windows devices, including PCs, tablets, Xbox One, Microsoft HoloLens, and more.
When the Start menu stops working, you cannot do many things in Windows. However, in cases where the Start menu stops working or not responding, the fix is pretty straightforward, and the steps below will show you how to do that.
Windows 11 has many new features and sleek design, but UWP apps and settings are not new. They were first introduced with Windows 8.
To get started with resetting the Start menu in Windows 11, follow the steps below:
How to reset or repair the Start menu in Windows 11
Again, one can reset or repair individual UWP menu apps and settings in Windows. You can reset or re-register the Start menu button if the Start Menu isn’t working or opening correctly.
First, open PowerShell as administrator. You can do that by using the keyboard shortcut and pressing the Windows key + R to launch the Run command window.
Then type the commands below to open PowerShell as administrator.
powershell Start-Process powershell -Verb runAs
When the PowerShell terminal screen opens, run the commands below to reset the Start menu for your profile only.
Get-AppxPackage Microsoft.Windows.ShellExperienceHost | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml"}
Or run the commands below to reset the Start menu for all users on the PC.
Get-AppxPackage -AllUsers Microsoft.Windows.ShellExperienceHost | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml"}
If you run the command above as administrator in PowerShell and get an error, please kill the Windows Shell Experience Host process in Task Manager and rerun the commands above.
After that, the Start menu should work again as expected. Click different sections and see if your issues are resolved.
That should do it!
Conclusion:
This post showed you how to reset the Start menu in Windows 11. If you find any error above or have something to add, please use the comment form below to report.
