Solved Search in Start Menu broken?

peekj · May 21, 2009

Has anyone experienced this before? I'm on W7 RC and since yesterday I can no longer launch apps by typing their name in the start menu. The attached image would usually display Excel 2007 but all I get now is that weird Programs icon.

The search still works for folders, ie I can type c:\progra... and it'll bring it up. Just start menu programs seem to be affected.

Any ideas?

Orbital Shark · May 21, 2009

You could troubleshoot the issue.

Open Control Panel & change the view to Small Icons and select Indexing Options.

Then click 'Troubleshoot search & indexing' and follow the on-screen prompts.

Hope this helps

Jeff

Brink · May 21, 2009

Hello Peekj,

You might double check your Customize Start Menu and Search (Folder Options) settings to see if they may have been changed. These are the default settings for them.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

Wurstsalat · May 21, 2009

i have the same isue...

the troubleshooting of the search enginge gives me something like "ntfs acl`s are incorrect" -> auto correction dont work -> i looked on a other 7 installation and ported the access rights -> same error
reinstall of 7 fixed it for me :/

if someone can fix it without reinstall, tell it

peekj · May 21, 2009

Hmm, troubleshooter found no problems. Rebuilding the Index also didn't seem to help.

peekj · May 21, 2009

I figured out that the 3 items I do get to see (Programs, Control Panel, and Files) are usually the separators between the results.

Also tested another user profile and that one works fine. I wonder what could have gotten corrupted...

Brink · May 22, 2009

Well, since it seems to work fine in the other new administrator account, you can copy the contents of your old account's C:\Users\(user-name) folders into the corresponding new account's C:\Users\(user-name) folders to keep your old account's settings. Be sure to copy over the contents of the hidden folders as well. After everything checks out, you can delete the old account from within the new account.

peekj · May 22, 2009

Yeah, that's what I ended up doing. Some apps' settings didn't transfer over (must have been stored in the registry) but overall it solved my problem. Let's hope it doesn't happen again

Brink · May 22, 2009

I'm happy to hear that you got it sorted. I hope it doesn't happen again for you.

sickinjapan · May 27, 2009

i know i come too late, and you already found a fix(kind of) to your problem.

i got similar problem, what i did to fix it was>
right click anywhere on the start menu > Properties > at "start menu" tab click at "Customize.." > go all the way down, look for "search other files and libraries" make sure it is checked.

that was it,

peekj · May 27, 2009

Yeah I checked that too but all the settings were correct. Must have been an RC bug

Plus, I upgraded from the beta, so some kookiness was to be expected.

TheBigGroundhog · Aug 10, 2009

I ran into the same problem over the past couple days with Windows 7 RC and finally dug into it some more.

1. End Task on EXPLORER.EXE from Task Manager.

2. Start the Registry Editor

3. Look for the following key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderTypes\{EF87B4CB-F2CE-4785-8658-4CA6C63E38C6}\TopViews\{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}

4. Rename the key so it looks like the following:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderTypes\{EF87B4CB-F2CE-4785-8658-4CA6C63E38C6}\TopViews\{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}.BACKUP

5. From Task Manager click on File | New Task (Run) and type EXPLORER.EXE and hit return.

6. Now try your search from the Start Menu again.

If the above process doesn't work for you, you can always put it back the way it was by reversing the process above.

I don't understand exactly what this key is controlling, but hopefully someone else can shed some light on why this works.

https://webmail.kkl.com/owa/redir.a...e00680ad1bb&URL=mailto:[email protected]

caveguard · Aug 10, 2009

Solved

Hi I had the same issue, tried everything.. What finally worked for me was to restore c:\users\USERNAME\*ntuser* from backup.. Now search works again. Regards, Ben

ennui · Aug 19, 2009

Would like to report that I faced the same problem and I followed the instructions posted by TheBigGroundhog. I was very surprised that it actually worked.

I'm running Windows 7 Professional.

TheBigGroundhog said:
I ran into the same problem over the past couple days with Windows 7 RC and finally dug into it some more.

1. End Task on EXPLORER.EXE from Task Manager.

2. Start the Registry Editor

3. Look for the following key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderTypes\{EF87B4CB-F2CE-4785-8658-4CA6C63E38C6}\TopViews\{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}

4. Rename the key so it looks like the following:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderTypes\{EF87B4CB-F2CE-4785-8658-4CA6C63E38C6}\TopViews\{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}.BACKUP

5. From Task Manager click on File | New Task (Run) and type EXPLORER.EXE and hit return.

6. Now try your search from the Start Menu again.

If the above process doesn't work for you, you can always put it back the way it was by reversing the process above.

I don't understand exactly what this key is controlling, but hopefully someone else can shed some light on why this works.

https://webmail.kkl.com/owa/redir.a...e00680ad1bb&URL=mailto:[email protected]

otrajman · Nov 15, 2009

wow, that worked!

Rycr · Feb 23, 2010

Yeah, that registry fix worked for me too. Don't know exactly why it worked, but I'm glad it did.

jonny163 · Apr 10, 2010

TheBigGroundhog said:
I ran into the same problem over the past couple days with Windows 7 RC and finally dug into it some more.

1. End Task on EXPLORER.EXE from Task Manager.

2. Start the Registry Editor

3. Look for the following key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderTypes\{EF87B4CB-F2CE-4785-8658-4CA6C63E38C6}\TopViews\{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}

4. Rename the key so it looks like the following:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderTypes\{EF87B4CB-F2CE-4785-8658-4CA6C63E38C6}\TopViews\{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}.BACKUP

5. From Task Manager click on File | New Task (Run) and type EXPLORER.EXE and hit return.

6. Now try your search from the Start Menu again.

If the above process doesn't work for you, you can always put it back the way it was by reversing the process above.

I don't understand exactly what this key is controlling, but hopefully someone else can shed some light on why this works.

This works. Thanks so much, this problem was irritating me something awful

djlm · Mar 25, 2011

Hello all,

I had this problem some months ago and it was solved by this solution of renaming the registry entry.

Now I have the same problem again, but renaming the registry entry no longer works. I also tried the hotfix from microsoft to no avail.

I tried creating another user and the new user also had this issue so I deleted that.

Any tips?

Thanks all.

Brink · Mar 25, 2011

djlm said:
Hello all,

I had this problem some months ago and it was solved by this solution of renaming the registry entry.

Now I have the same problem again, but renaming the registry entry no longer works. I also tried the hotfix from microsoft to no avail.

I tried creating another user and the new user also had this issue so I deleted that.

Any tips?

Thanks all.

Hello Djlm,

You might see if doing a system restore using a restore point dated before the issue started may be able to undo and fix it for you.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

djlm · Mar 27, 2011

Hi,

Sorry for the delay I was out of town.

I tried this, but there is only 1 restore available with today's date.

Best Regards

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