Corrupted or Glitchy Windows Tiles in new Start Menu???
Start Menu and Windows App Beheaviour – Not Appearing
I was having a lot of issues on my Windows 10 PC. Most of the standard apps, like Weather, Xbox, and Microsoft Store would abruptly exit. There are lots of resources on the net which aim to repair this problem simply by copying/typing the following into powershell. I am writing this for other techs so they can read this and try this out on their own systems. Please do not hold me accountable if you run into issues….Here’s what I did…:
Get-AppXPackage -Users | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml"}
Basically, what’s happening here is that all registered Windows app configuration data is read and then the data found is used to reregister a fresh app instance for each app found in the “Users\AppData” folder based on the system’s default user account & other system folders.
This fix repairs the issue in the when clicking the Start button and no Start menu appears.
Check “Users” Folder Junctions
A machine I was using was also having a permissions issue in the ‘Application Data’ shortcut or junction of the user’s “AppData\Local” folder. The lack of junction points was causing the above command or similar commands to iterate through ‘Application Data’, resulting in duplicates AppData\Local\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\.
The solution to this is to navigate to all your Application Data shortcuts with ‘hidden file’ viewing enabled, right-clicking, hitting properties and the security tab, then disabling inheritance and removing all access to these and hitting ok. This might cause issues with legacy applications….but all worked for me…
If you simply try running the Add-AppXPackage command from within a powershell loop alone and hope that it works, it might unless if have permission issues on the machine. If you are reading this and can take on the challenge, I recommend giving this a shot before you obliterate your whole machine by formatting and reinstalling Windows.
If permissions are the issue…
Generally, a system with file permission problems is caused by users or IT technicians in error. You should use the following two commands to help repair Windows App issues if you believe file permissions are playing some sort of role with your Store Apps.
icacls "C:\Windows\SystemApps" /reset /T /C /Q
icacls "C:\Program Files\WindowsApps" /reset /T /C /Q
