Windows 10 start menu stops working

[BBarnes1]

I have been fighting this issue since the beginning of summer.

I had been using windows 10 upgraded from windows 7 for several years no problems. I started to have issues with the PC freezing after waking up. It eventually became so bad that windows 10 was unusable. So i made a Microsoft account to preserve my windows license, used my linux partition to back everything up, and reformatted.

Since then, about every 2 weeks I have to reformat b/c out of nowhere my start menu stops working. Other symptoms: PIN login doesn't work, the login screen only has the stock picture (no longer cycles new pictures).

I also tried using a local account instead of the MS account.... doesn't seem to make a difference

PC:
ASUS M5A99X R2 EVO
FX-6350
Corsair H80i GT
MSI RX480
16 gb Corsair vengence ram
256 gb ocz vertex ssd
160gb / 320 gb hdds

I've tried the windows repair, it fails
I've tried using sfc/ scannow and DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth, it fails
I've tried creating a new account, start menu still doesn't work.
I've tried reinstalling windows apps, fails

I started to suspect its a hardware issue. All the hard drives check out fine. Ram checks out fine. Reset my overclock back to stock settings. Last time i reformatted was on stock clock settings and only using the ssd for storage. The only applications installed were chrome, steam, rocket league, battlenet, amd drivers, not much else. I didn't even removed the tiles from the start menu.

I've reformatted 6 times now. The start menu problem persists. I just keep my win10 imaged usb handy.....

I'm completely stumped... Any help would be appreciated.

Maybe its time for Ryzen?

 

[13thmonkey]

My first thoughts, regardless of what you have tested.

Bad SSD cable
Bad memory
Bad sata socket
Bad windows image
Bad drivers that are being constantly reinforced, chipset drivers most likely suspect
Temps issues

Any those ring any bells, some of them will have symptoms that you might have examined, anything you've discounted?

 

[BBarnes1]

Well, no harm in swapping out the sata cable and trying a different plug on the mother board. I'll give that a whirl.

I don't think there are temp issues, I watch the GPU and CPU temps and haven't seen anything odd.

I doubt its the image. I used the microsoft utility to create the bootable usb. I've done it several times with the same result.

How would I find bad ram if memtest doesn't turn anything up?

I haven't updated the chipset drivers since this started, just been rolling with whatever windows installs. I'll get those from ASUS this time.

 

[13thmonkey]

if memtest says you are ok, that's as good as you are going to get, so you've discounted it.

 

[BBarnes1]

if memtest says you are ok, that's as good as you are going to get, so you've discounted it.

I installed hardware monitor to watch CPU and GPU temps, things seemed fine temp wise but the machine would freeze shortly after opening the utility. I installed the chipset driver straight from AMD, and the problem stopped.

I was also poking around inside the machine while it was running. I noticed that when ever i touched 1 of the ram sticks it would completely freeze up. So i reseated that stick and its able it withstand a poke now...

Maybe these things are contributing factors, maybe not, time will tell....

 

[13thmonkey]

if memtest says you are ok, that's as good as you are going to get, so you've discounted it.

I installed hardware monitor to watch CPU and GPU temps, things seemed fine temp wise but the machine would freeze shortly after opening the utility. I installed the chipset driver straight from AMD, and the problem stopped.

I was also poking around inside the machine while it was running. I noticed that when ever i touched 1 of the ram sticks it would completely freeze up. So i reseated that stick and its able it withstand a poke now...

Maybe these things are contributing factors, maybe not, time will tell....

So it looks like a memory issue corrupting read/writes and eventually corrupting the OS.

BTW 'poking about' a live machine is really really dumb, hate to say it, but it is. Have seen enough 'I was poking about and it went bang, now it doesn't work' threads in my time. Other than that, great news!

 

[BBarnes1]

if memtest says you are ok, that's as good as you are going to get, so you've discounted it.

I installed hardware monitor to watch CPU and GPU temps, things seemed fine temp wise but the machine would freeze shortly after opening the utility. I installed the chipset driver straight from AMD, and the problem stopped.

I was also poking around inside the machine while it was running. I noticed that when ever i touched 1 of the ram sticks it would completely freeze up. So i reseated that stick and its able it withstand a poke now...

Maybe these things are contributing factors, maybe not, time will tell....

So it looks like a memory issue corrupting read/writes and eventually corrupting the OS.

BTW 'poking about' a live machine is really really dumb, hate to say it, but it is. Have seen enough 'I was poking about and it went bang, now it doesn't work' threads in my time. Other than that, great news!

Can't agree more... but thats where i'm at trouble shooting this problem. I'm also an engineer that works with circuit card assemblies everyday, so i kinda know where the line is as far as poking around goes. And if it did go boom, it could just replace it

 

[BBarnes1]

My first thoughts, regardless of what you have tested.

Bad SSD cable
Bad memory
Bad sata socket
Bad windows image
Bad drivers that are being constantly reinforced, chipset drivers most likely suspect
Temps issues

Any those ring any bells, some of them will have symptoms that you might have examined, anything you've discounted?

Well I had reformatted before making this thread, updated to all the newest drivers, tested everything. Prime 95'd the cpu and memory for 9 hrs with no errors....

A lot of my windows settings stopped working. I open start menu, search for updates, and click on windows update settings... and nothing. nothing happens. The all settings button in the action center is broken as well....

sfc /scannow reports corrupted files but can't fix it
DISM also can't do anything. So the OS is corrupted again.

What are the chances the SSD is bad even though diagnostics say its fine?

 

[13thmonkey]

was the install done before the reseat?

how dusty is the machine? clean slots?

rebuild pagefile, sert it to no pf, or to a different disk, reboot, and then put it back where you need it, i had bsod's for a while as my pf was on an early ssd that was failing.

 

[leigh76]

Check out this thread..... if you have this update installed KB4043961

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-3554170/fix-taskbar-start-button-clickable-windows-pro-v1709-build-16299.html