[tremon]

For me, it's either:

- the start menu opens but displays only an empty box.

- the start menu opens fine, but application search produces zero results, not even if I type the complete name of the program I ran yesterday.

Yes, when something like this happens I throw my hands up and declare it not-working today. At least Winkey+R works and my most-used programs are pinned to the taskbar anyway.

Most of the time it's fixed after a good night's sleep, other times Windows manages to pull itself together after a few hours. It's usually not a blocker for me, so I don't care enough to keep rebooting my machine in the vain hope that some user action might fix it. It's my employer's machine, so my employer's problem, not mine.

[EasyMark]

Virus? I’ve used window for over 2 decades, along with Linux and I’ve never seen the start menu do anything like that. I’ve seen it hang of course, but I don’t even remember the last time.