How do I get my Windows 10 Start Menu back?

QUESTION: I upgraded to Windows 10 in the fall. Everything was going well until a few weeks ago when my Start menu disappeared. When I click the start button, I only see my tiles, the icon for the Apps menu, and the Power button. It’s only happening on my profile (admin) and not the other 2 user profiles. I’ve searched online to try and figure out what I did but nothing has helped. I’m stumped. Help! – Dawn M. from Hominy, Oklahoma

ANSWER: First, let me catch other readers up on what transpired after I received this question. Because it was difficult to visualize what Dawn was describing, I emailed her back and asked her to send a screenshot of what she was describing. She was happy to oblige and sent me the following screenshot:

I then replied again to Dawn and told her that, based on the screenshot, it looked like her Windows 10 setup might be stuck in tablet mode, something I have written about previously.

Turns out this wasn’t the case. But my suggestion did lead Dawn to discover another setting that was accidentally enabled called, “Use Start full screen”.

Disable “Use Start full screen”

To get to this setting in Windows 10, perform the following steps:

Click the Start button.
Click Settings. If you can’t get to Settings, you may need to click the 3-bar icon at the very top-left of the screen.
In the Settings window, click Personalization.
In the Personalization window, click Start on the left-hand side of the window.

Now, scroll down until you see the toggle switch labeled, “Use Start full screen”. If it is on, turn it off.

This is the particular setting that fixed Dawn’s issue. Or in Dawn’s words, “Hallelujah! I’ve been trying to figure this out for a month now. I’m glad to finally know what happened and to have my menu back.”

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