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I was asked to run Windows Update on someone's laptop which hadn't been updated since they bought it (no internet access). There were about 500MB worth. Once they finished installing, the start menu suddenly stopped opening. I tried restarting the system, but no change. In addition, when right-clicking on the start button, the last 3 menu items are completely blank.
I've run various malware scans and nothing is coming up, so I suspect it might have been an update that tweaked something, but there were so many that I don't know where to begin looking. I'd really like to fix this without doing a complete reinstall. But I'm out of ideas.
EDIT: In safe mode, the start button is completely gone (but the rest of the taskbar is there). I tried running sfc /scannow
, but it exited with "Windows Resource Protection could not perform the requested operation."
At this point, I'm thinking the system is FUBAR'd...
EDIT 2: The Start Menu and Taskbar control panel applet doesn't work, either. The window appears for a split second and then closes.
I was able to restore the system back to before the updates were installed and the Start Menu works fine. So, I ran
chkdsk
, which reported no problems, followed bysfc /scannow
again. It completed the scan but said some problems couldn't be fixed. I reinstalled the updates and the same problem occurred. I was able to switch to the classic start menu via the Registry (the Start Menu and Taskbar options dialog won't open). The start menu opens now, but it only shows 2 items: Windows Update and Default Programs. I think I'm just going to backup everything and reinstall. This is ridiculous. – David Brown – 2010-10-24T18:50:32.257If SFC cannot fix problems, then Windows is really loused up. If infection is a possibility, then reformat and reinstall is best option. Do slow sector-by-sector format, to ensure that bad sectors are detected. – harrymc – 2010-10-24T19:23:51.763
I've run malware scans that didn't detect anything. I finally found a Vista upgrade disk, so I'm going to try the repair installation before a reinstall. – David Brown – 2010-10-24T19:26:02.517
The disk I had contained Vista without the service packs, so it wouldn't let me do a repair installation and I didn't feel like going through the process of slipstreaming. Ultimately, I just backed up the photos and music and did a complete reinstall. Still no idea what started all of that, though... – David Brown – 2010-11-21T00:00:15.650
Windows Update is dangerous. I set it to manual, and never do it without taking first an image of the system drive. This has already saved me a reinstall a couple of times. – harrymc – 2010-11-21T07:15:48.690