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Server 2016 Start Menu not working...

Kevin Nickson

Asked by Kevin Nickson,

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Kyle Kaufman Newbie

Kyle Kaufman

Posted
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Anyone else have this happen recently?  I am seeing  the issue with all of my desktop servers, Server 2016 7.15 LTSR CU 1.  I have tried all the fixes in this discussion and many others and I'm still getting the not responding start and search button after the first successful logon using UPM.  If I delete ONLY the NTUSER.DAT file in the UPM profile and launch the desktop again the start and search menus work.  If I disable UPM GPO search and start buttons always respond.  I have not applied the profile management hotfix in CTX235399 but I plan to this evening to see if the hotfix resolves the issue with UPM.

 

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Aaron Curtis1709152006 Apprentice

Aaron Curtis1709152006

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Also seeing the start menu break on a few servers this month.  only for users that are local admins on the machine.  profile management is set not to manage the admin profiles, so it shouldn't be messing that up.

 

have a ticket open with microsoft about it.  hopefully they can fix it.  it's broken for various other reasons before, but the usual solutions aren't working this time.

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Justin Annand Rookie

Justin Annand

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Seeing this issue sporadically as well. We have ~90 servers and if it occurs it will only affect a single server.

Server 2016

7.15 CU4 VDA

 

Exclusions

"!ctx_localappdata!\Microsoft\Windows\Usrclass.dat*" - In file exclusions

"!ctx_localappdata!\packages" - Enabled in default exclusions

 

Support case logged with Citrix.

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Aaron Curtis1709152006 Apprentice

Aaron Curtis1709152006

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Posted

actually, going back further I remembered we're applying a built and captured WIM file via SCCM to the servers facing this problem.  I'd bet there is/was a bug with sysprep and the start menu/search in 2016.

 

I'll be changing my server 2016 SCCM task sequence to install from the source wim instead of the build and capture wim we created to get around any possible sysprep bugs.

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Manuel Mueller Rookie

Manuel Mueller

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VDA 1912 LTSR, Windows Server 2016

Event Logs: Activation of app Microsoft.Windows.Cortana_cw5n1h2txyewy!CortanaUI failed with error:  (Event ID 5973)

Startmenu and search button not clickable

Our Solution: Enable Windows Search (previously disabled by optimization template)

Other suggestions in this thread did not work for us.

 

 

 

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Eric Rottier Apprentice

Eric Rottier

Posted
Posted
On 12/17/2019 at 2:26 AM, Justin Annand said:

Seeing this issue sporadically as well. We have ~90 servers and if it occurs it will only affect a single server.

Server 2016

7.15 CU4 VDA

 

Exclusions

"!ctx_localappdata!\Microsoft\Windows\Usrclass.dat*" - In file exclusions

"!ctx_localappdata!\packages" - Enabled in default exclusions

 

Support case logged with Citrix.

 

This is exactly the opposite that Citrix (now?) says you have to do: https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX224835

 

They say that Userclass.dat* file have to be Synced and packages folder Mirrored.

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Justin Annand Rookie

Justin Annand

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Updated to the new best practices on 14/02.

 

Enable Default Exclusion List > Remove  !ctx_localappdata!\Packages

 

Exclusion list - directories 
Remove Appdata\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Caches

 

Exclusion list - files 
Remove Appdata\Local\Microsoft\Windows\UsrClass.dat*

 

Synchronization 
Folders to Miror:
Add Appdata\Local\Packages
Add Appdata\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Caches
Add !ctx_localappdata!\TileDataLayer

 

Files to synchronize 
Appdata\Local\Microsoft\Windows\UsrClass.dat*

-------------------------

Still experiencing random start menu not working issues.

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Eric Rottier Apprentice

Eric Rottier

Posted
Posted (edited)
On 3/14/2018 at 4:46 PM, Kevin Nickson said:

For some reason, the Start Menu on several of my 2016 VDA's stopped working. There are a bunch of Event Log entries that basically point to a Cortana problem or a "ShellExperienceHost" issue. None of the fixes I've tried fix this. Has anyone else had this issue? Thanks.

 

Edit:

whoops, made my own mistake - sorry!

 

Two possible solutions:

1) If you use AppLocker search Citrix forum with this term! Working as intended or something.

2) Or else you make have to reset the Windows packages:

https://www.lexo.ch/blog/2017/06/solved-windows-10-start-menu-and-modern-apps-do-not-function/ (nr 4.)

Do note! I do use another script somewhere, but I can't find it from where I am now, so do try it at your own risk.

Edited by e.rottier
My own mistake for not being able to read...
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Alessandro Saiko Newbie

Alessandro Saiko

Posted
Posted
On 2/3/2020 at 10:54 AM, Manuel Mueller said:

VDA 1912 LTSR, Windows Server 2016

Event Logs: Activation of app Microsoft.Windows.Cortana_cw5n1h2txyewy!CortanaUI failed with error:  (Event ID 5973)

Startmenu and search button not clickable

Our Solution: Enable Windows Search (previously disabled by optimization template)

Other suggestions in this thread did not work for us.

 

 

 

Hi,

 

did all users on a VDA had the problem at the same time?

 

I have VDA1912 CU1 , Server 2016.  Random Users have the StartMenu/searchbutton  problem on random VDAs. Workaround is to logoff/login. It does not affect all users on a VDA.

No running shellexperiencehost.exe and no searchui.exe. Klicking the startmenu/search only results in crash reports in Eventlog.

One time my start menu was working - only searchui.exe was crashing.

Windows Search is disabled.

 

Problem started with 1912CU1. Before we had 7.15 CU3 , no startmenu problems there.

 

Thanks

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Patrick Matula Contributor

Patrick Matula

Posted
Posted
On 7/17/2020 at 12:59 PM, Alessandro Saiko said:

Hi,

 

did all users on a VDA had the problem at the same time?

 

I have VDA1912 CU1 , Server 2016.  Random Users have the StartMenu/searchbutton  problem on random VDAs. Workaround is to logoff/login. It does not affect all users on a VDA.

No running shellexperiencehost.exe and no searchui.exe. Klicking the startmenu/search only results in crash reports in Eventlog.

One time my start menu was working - only searchui.exe was crashing.

Windows Search is disabled.

 

Problem started with 1912CU1. Before we had 7.15 CU3 , no startmenu problems there.

 

Thanks

 

Hi!

 

It seems like we have the same issue. Some differences: 

We use VDA 9.15 CU5 (but with profile management 1912CU1) - we do this, because we hit another bug... anyway. 

Second difference: We enabled Windows Search. 

 

We configured profile management best practices and it happens only to a few users (completely random) to non-specific VDAs. 

 

Error code: 0xc000027b 

 

windbg information: 

ExceptionAddress: 00007fff4242640b (Windows_UI_Xaml!DirectUI::ErrorHelper::ProcessUnhandledError+0x00000000000000fb)

 

Do you use profile streaming? We do .. and in my head I think it could make sense that there is something wrong... (but its a guess without confirmation in anyway) 

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Alessandro Saiko Newbie

Alessandro Saiko

Posted
Posted
On 9/2/2020 at 4:57 PM, Patrick Matula said:

 

Hi!

 

It seems like we have the same issue. Some differences: 

We use VDA 9.15 CU5 (but with profile management 1912CU1) - we do this, because we hit another bug... anyway. 

Second difference: We enabled Windows Search. 

 

We configured profile management best practices and it happens only to a few users (completely random) to non-specific VDAs. 

 

Error code: 0xc000027b 

 

windbg information: 

ExceptionAddress: 00007fff4242640b (Windows_UI_Xaml!DirectUI::ErrorHelper::ProcessUnhandledError+0x00000000000000fb)

 

Do you use profile streaming? We do .. and in my head I think it could make sense that there is something wrong... (but its a guess without confirmation in anyway) 

 

Yes, we use profile streaming.

I had a Citrix Ticket open -  After analyzing and checking different things , "make Windows Updates" (new updates were just two weeks old), they told me : "And here we are seeing a crash for a Windows Process. With that crash in place we can not help much as we work on top of Windows. And we are very much dependent on ShellExperienceHost.exe to make StartMenu redirection work. So please help in contacting Microsoft to get these crash dumps analysed. And If they are pointing any of our module as the culprit ,please let us know. "

 

As I only have MS professional support.. I did not go that way. Did you find a solution?

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Greg Kern1709162740 Apprentice

Greg Kern1709162740

Posted
Posted
On 10/22/2020 at 11:42 AM, Patrick Matula said:

This is the solution: https://twitter.com/p_matula/status/1319312737290358787

 

Patrick,

We're deploying Hosted Shared Desktops on Windows Server 2019, VDA version 2106...  After the 3rd Reboot of our Test machine, the Start Menu "breaks" (shows those few bare Icons and the Start Menu only shows some random number on the Icon squares)...   I have tried playing with a custom LayoutModification.xml file, but the results are the same... 

 

And I tried what your Twitter post here says, and it doesn't seem to work, either.

I do have a question about it, though:  We are using CPM Containers, and as you probably know, there is a section there for FOLDERS to "Exclude" from the VHDX disk, but there isn't one for FILES to Exclude... So I put the "Appdata\Local\Microsoft\Windows\UsrClass.dat*" in the "Exclusion list - files" section of the the "File System" part, in UPM...

 

But doesn't that "File System" section of UPM get ignored when you use Containers?

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