My Start button turned into a plain gray text "Start" button. How can I fix this?

9

I don't know how it happened, but my Start button has turned to plain text instead of the Windows logo. I don't even know how to Google this problem:

enter image description here

Anyone know what could cause this and how I can get it to go away? I never thought I'd miss a Windows logo... but that's ugly.

Update: sfc /scannow comes back clean. Resetting to Start Menu defaults did nothing. Value of Shell key in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon is explorer.exe. New user profile started up without this button, so it must be specific to my profile.

Tanner Faulkner

Posted 2012-08-01T21:03:56.527

Reputation: 11 948

What is in Shell value of key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon? – Maximus – 2012-08-01T21:38:09.670

@Maximus explorer.exe – Tanner Faulkner – 2012-08-01T21:45:09.590

May be explorer.exe is modified? try to 'Run as Administrator' sfc.exe /scannow? – Maximus – 2012-08-01T21:50:57.460

1

Similar question http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/itprovistaannouncements/thread/e729f8e2-a974-4026-8cf2-38ae6f63e7b1

– Maximus – 2012-08-01T21:55:45.317

Rebuilding icon cache worked. Thanks for getting rid of that ugly sucker. – Tanner Faulkner – 2012-08-01T22:19:24.243

Answers

7

There's a similar question on social.technet.microsoft.com.

The solution was rebuilding icon cache:

  1. Delete the file %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\IconCache.db.
  2. Reboot.

Maximus

Posted 2012-08-01T21:03:56.527

Reputation: 19 395

Asked: 2012-08-01T21:03:56.527

Viewed: 2 305 times

Active: 2012-08-01T22:41:52.233