Start menu shortcuts disapppeared

99% of the stuff I had installed is gone from the start menu.

When I go to C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs or -- every folder is empty, no shortcuts in any of them.
Same for C:\Users\x\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs

The problem is that nothing is searchable now. When I type in the name of installed programs in search, only web results are shown.

Recently I uninstalled a few programs with revo uninstaller, and also did a windows update, not sure which one did this.

I tried rebuilding indexing, but it's permastuck on "indexing is paused" regardless of what I do (the number does goes up but slowly,) but I don't think this fixes it.

I did sfc /scannow and dism commands, none found any errors.

I did a system restore to before I did anything I could think of but still bogged. Any idea how to get programs back to being searchable? Manual one by one is last resort, can't think of anything else, unfortunately I didn't find any solution to create shortcuts for already installed programs automatically.

Welcome to the forum.
If you have a backup restore it. Other than that, though I do not believe it will solve the problem in your particular case since your user account is affected, you could first try a repair install
Repair Install Windows 11 Repair Install Windows 11 with an In-place Upgrade Tutorial

IMO it will require a clean install to straighten it out. Clean Install Windows 11 Clean Install Windows 11 Tutorial
If you have access to your personal files be sure and back them up before doing anything. COPY them and then PASTE to external usb or hard drive.

I strongly suggest once you get it straightened out that you use some sort of back up solution to protect yourself in the future. There are a number of good, free backup programs available.

Thanks.

I do backups of everything but the system. This is the first time I had an issue like this, so I never felt the need to make backups of stuff like start menu and other things in %appdata% or ProgramData.

Several restoration points were created when I was uninstalling things with revo uninstaller, but they seem to be registry only because even after the restore the shortcuts are still gone.

For now I manually added back shortcuts to the things I use often, but I will probably do a clean install soon which seems like a yearly thing at this point. Something always seems to break after around 12 months or so.

Meanwhile, if anyone reads this and remembers any fix or experienced similar things I would appreciate if you could share how it was solved.

Enferlain said:

do backups of everything but the system.

Click to expand...

ALWAYS have a full system backup on hand. It can save your bacon. Poll on Backup software