Win 11 Start menu and search button problems

I was going to recommend the overlay or in-place upgrade too, since a user on this long and winding (and old) thread in the Microsoft community said it fixed this type of error. I'd never tried it before, so I ran it in a virtual machine (Windows 10 in my case) and it seemed to work great. (The procedure saves all your previous Windows installation files, so if it works for you, you'll want to run Disk Cleanup to remove them.)

More generally, there's a continuum of recovery techniques available; this article is a good summary (the in-place upgrade is the author's step 3). In my case I've never had much luck with SFC, I'm not sure I've ever run DISM, and I've had weird results restoring from restore points. IMHO the closer you are to a fresh install or reset, the more confident you can be that your system is reliable.

To do the in-place upgrade, you can just enter the top-level folder of the installation media and run "setup.exe"; the default installation should preserve your files, apps and settings. Alternatively I believe you can boot the install media and select the option "Upgrade: Install Windows and keep files, settings, and applications".

Backup important files.

On boot, access and run ePSA and get 100% good report. There is really no good-reason for corrupt files unless your drive is going bad (or some other hardware failure).

Also, in Windows ... run  Crystal-DiskInfo (Standard version ZIP-format) or Passmark's Disk-Checkup and check your Drive-C health. 

If no problems are found by now, you can try an overlay-upgrade install of Windows-11 (with preserving apps and data) from a perfect-uncompromised Microsoft.com Media Creation Tool USB flash-drive.

C-Drive should be a SSD now-days. Windows-11 on a spinning-platter drive is going to be very slow. Upgrading Windows-10 to Windows-11 is enough to push a barely working HDD over the edge into failure territory. The SMART system kicks-in to try to keep your system alive until you can fix it (ie, replace drive). If you had a HDD, you would replace with a SSD.

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@NJDave wrote:

1. I was going to recommend the overlay or in-place upgrade too,

2. To do the in-place upgrade, you can just enter the top-level folder of the installation media and run "setup.exe"; the default installation should preserve your files, apps and settings. Alternatively I believe you can boot the install media and select the option "Upgrade: Install Windows and keep files, settings, and applications".

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1. That is why I said "backup first". In case it goes side-ways.

2. Right. But still, there is no good-reason for Windows files to start go missing or corrupting themselves. Other than maybe a "soft-file error" like Windows Disk Error Check fixes ... you likely have some kind of hardware-failure (usually the disk itself). SMART will try to shuffle things around (to keep them safe/valid) until you can replace the drive. SMART doesn't HEAL anything, it just keeps it alive. In the old-days without SMART, the disk would just "crash".

Yes, after a Windows Disk Error Check ... if it finds something it can't fix, you will have to run DISM and/or SFC to patch it up and replace those missing files. Yes, it works. Then, you troubleshoot why it went bonkers in the first place.

bump @gdof15 

Try creating a new user account. If it works with new user then could be corrupt user profile.

Thanks for replies so far.  haven't started any fixes you suggested quite yet.  

Note: windows SFC came back clean.   Yesterday I uninstalled the graphics NVDIA GTX 1050 Ti and reinstalled the driver--suggested elsewhere and no change (start menu opens after a delay, and then closes about 2 secs later with even slower of no response on successive attempts).  Search doesn't work--at all.

Running HW checking in a few minutes.

Backing up files and creating a new in-place Windows repair disc with ISO file as suggested in first reply.

Dunno if related but I was attempting to download a Microsoft Store PDF editor app when I discovered all this a few days ago.  Microsoft store also not working error 0x80070005

will do that next.  Again, thanks for the assist.  

well isn't this delightful.  Attempted to create/add new admin user via the Windows Setting method.   A blank Microsoft window pops briefly, then disappears and nothing after.  

Maybe try enabling the built-in admin account. From elevated command prompt type:
net user administrator /active:yes

Or create new user from elevated command prompt: net user name password /add
Replacing username and password with new user info.

In-place upgrade using the Win 11 ISO burned to a removable HDD seems to have fixed both start menu and search.  

Being a long-time operational tester in USAF fighter aircraft and associated supports systems, i have learned one thing--software coders who just want to change the look of the HMI/UMI need to remember their simple changes can contain errors, so if it isn't broken ask yourself why give anything a "new look"?  The old start menu has worked just fine.