How To: Recover from Windows 10 Start Screen Lockups

Alas, it happens, and it happened to me a couple times over the last weekend. And, watching others use Windows 10 after a mass number of upgrades last week, it seems I’m not the only one who has experienced it. For me, the problem would exhibit itself coming out of sleep mode. Lifting the lid of my HP Spectre x360, the Windows 10 Start Screen would show but I could do nothing else. I couldn’t tap on an app or tap on the Start button to get rid of the Start Screen. Windows 10 was at a standstill.

But, there’s a quick fix, or workaround, and one that has been available in previous versions of Windows, but generally tied to fixing other lockups. If you find that your Windows 10 Start Screen hangs on you, do this…

This method effectively recycles the Windows 10 shell that runs under the Windows Explorer process.

Big note: A keyboard is required for this to work.