Reinstall or Repair stuck Windows 10 Start Menu & Taskbar, and Fix “Critical Error”

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Occasionally, the Start button, Taskbar, and the Notification area icons may get stuck or frozen; clicking them does nothing. When the items in the Notification area are frozen, you wouldn’t be able to access Action Center, Wi-fi network settings, etc.

If the Windows 10 Start Menu is frozen or non-responsive and does not work, or shows the Critical Error message, here is the list of troubleshooting steps you can follow. The fixes involve running the Start menu Troubleshooter or manually registering the ShellExperienceHost & StartMenuExperienceHost packages using PowerShell or restoring the default Start menu by rebuilding the Start menu database.

This article explains how to repair, reset, or reinstall the Start menu in Windows 10.Read more

How to Open Excel Hyperlinks (to Folders) Without Showing the Navigation Pane in Explorer

When you click on a hyperlink in Excel that points to a folder location, it always opens the folder with navigation pane enabled, even if the user has disabled the navigation pane. This is because Excel invokes the "explore" verb instead of “open”, when launching a hyperlink to a folder. To prevent the navigation pane from being shown when clicking a hyperlink in Excel, use the steps:Read more

Cascading Menu and File Explorer Jump Lists Issue in Windows 10

When you implement Cascading Menus in File Folders (Directory) using the SubCommands or ExtendedSubCommands registry keys in Windows 10, an interesting thing happens. The last item in your Cascading menu gets executed when you right-click Pinned File Explorer shortcut in the Taskbar, and click on a folder in the Jump List, instead of a folder window opening.Read more

How to Selectively Delete System Restore Points

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The System Restore user interface doesn’t have an option to remove individual restore points. But, it’s possible to remove Restore Points selectively using the Vssadmin command-line, PowerShell, or by writing a program that makes use of the SRRemoveRestorePoint API in Windows Vista through Windows 10.

This article explains the two methods to delete individual restore points in Windows.

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How to Clean Boot Windows Using Autoruns?

This post explains how to clean boot Windows using the Autoruns utility from Microsoft. Clean boot is nothing but starting Windows without 3rd party services and startup programs. This procedure is done to find out the which program, service or a module is causing a specific problem in Windows. Once you narrow down the offending program or module, remove the program, and enable all other items that you’ve disabled earlier, to come out from clean boot to normal state.Read more