Restart Start Menu in Windows 10

Windows 10 comes with a completely reworked Start menu, which combines Live Tiles introduced in Windows 8 with classic app shortcuts. It has an adaptive design and can be used on displays with various sizes and resolutions. Starting in Windows 10 version 1903, you can restart the Start menu without restarting the Explorer shell and apps. This can be useful if you have issues with the Start menu or pinned tiles.

Starting in Windows 10 May 2019 Update, also known as 'version 1903' and '19H1', the Start menu has got is own process that allows it to appear faster, increases its reliability. Besides that, there are a number of usability improvements made to the Start menu.

Windows 10 Start Menu has Live Tile support for Universal (Store) apps installed on your PC. When you pin such an app to the Start menu, its Live Tile will show dynamic content like news, weather forecast, images and so on. For example, you can add a useful data usage Live Tile.

As you may already know, the Start menu in previous Windows 10 releases has been hosted by a system process called ShellExperienceHost.exe. In Windows 10 May 2019 Update Microsoft has separated it into its own process, called StartMenuExperienceHost.exe.

This gives the Start menu a performance boost and resolves a number of issues like delays in launching some Win32 apps. Users will notice measurable improvements in Start reliability. The Start menu is now opening significantly faster.

There are a number of methods you can use to restart the Start menu process in Windows 10. Let's review them.

To Restart the Start Menu in Windows 10, do the following.

1. Open the Task Manager (press Ctr+ Shift + Esc).
2. If it looks as follows, switch it to the full view using the "More details" link in the bottom right corner.
3. On the Processes tab, locate Start in the list.
4. Select it and click on End task.
5. Alternatively, right-click the Start item and select End task from the context menu.

You are done. The Start menu process will now stop and automatically start. If doesn't start automatically, start it manually by running the following file:

C:\Windows\SystemApps\Microsoft.Windows.StartMenuExperienceHost_cw5n1h2txyewy\StartMenuExperienceHost.exe

Tip: Alternatively, you can end the StartMenuExperienceHost.exe process from the Details tab.

Select it and click on End task, then run it again.

Also, there are a couple of console commands to restart the Start menu process. You can use either the command prompt app or PowerShell.

Restart the Start menu from the Command Prompt

1. Open a new command prompt
2. Copy-paste or type the following command: taskkill /im StartMenuExperienceHost.exe /f.
3. The Start menu process will be restarted automatically.

You are done.

Note: If the Start menu process doesn't start automatically, you can start it manually right from the command prompt console with the following command:

start C:\Windows\SystemApps\Microsoft.Windows.StartMenuExperienceHost_cw5n1h2txyewy\StartMenuExperienceHost.exe

Finally, you can use PowerShell to end and restart the Start menu process in Windows 10.

Restart the Start menu using PowerShell

1. Open PowerShell. Tip: You can add "Open PowerShell As Administrator" context menu.
2. Type or copy-paste the following command: Stop-Process -Name "StartMenuExperienceHost" -Force.
3. The Start menu process will be terminated. It will start automatically.
4. If the Start menu process doesn't start automatically, start it manually as follows. Start-Process -FilePath "C:\Windows\SystemApps\Microsoft.Windows.StartMenuExperienceHost_cw5n1h2txyewy\StartMenuExperienceHost.exe"

That's it.

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