Windows 2012 R2 start button not working over RDP

Question

It seems that when I RDP to some 2012 R2 machines, the start button seems to become un-responsive (Highlight doesn't even appear over the icon).

Failing over to ye'old ALT+Home still works a charm however.

A reboot resolves the problem, but it does intermittently return after. Has anyone experienced this or knows how to fix without rebooting production servers.

I don't have solution for you, but you can also use "shutdown -r" to restart, "shutdown -l" to log off. Since I myself always have a command prompt open, works great for me. — strongline, May 07 '15 at 13:03
I got this problem recently on our VPS Server running Windows 2016. Start button and Action Center are both not working. Right click menu works. Tried the solutions here. None worked. Reboot didn't solve the problem either :( — navigator, May 23 '17 at 07:05

score 9 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 14 '15 at 13:19

9

I see the same problem, and found a workaround by moving the task bar to the left or right side of the screen, and suddenly it Works Again. (moving it back to the lower left corner, breaks it Again)

answered Oct 14 '15 at 13:19

Chance

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2

This didn't work for me :( – navigator May 23 '17 at 07:03
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Simply restart process File Manager will solved it. – Steven Chou Jun 07 '18 at 09:20
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killing explorer.exe from task manager and then again running it resolved it. Thanks @sing10407 – Mohammad Yusuf Jan 13 '19 at 12:57
This time I couldn't find Explorer.exe in task manager. So I open powershell by typing powershell in Run and then entered this which fixed the issue: `Stop-process -name "Explorer"` – Mohammad Yusuf Jul 15 '19 at 13:23
Worked for me :-) +1 – T-Heron Feb 09 '22 at 14:42

score 5 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 04 '16 at 18:36

5

I have the same problem. If you open task manager under details, there are 2 explorer.exe running. End both tasks and run new task type explorer will work.

answered Mar 04 '16 at 18:36

Ntiger

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Only 1 Windows Explorer instance running, however when I ended the task, restart fixed this. Weird. – Tikhon Oct 05 '17 at 12:39

score -3 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 21 '16 at 15:03

-3

Sign out and then sign back in again. That fixed it for me.

answered Jun 21 '16 at 15:03

Jeff

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Perhaps if you explain why you would need to logoff and log back on again you could assist the OP in understanding why that would fix the issue they are experiencing. – Citizen Jun 21 '16 at 20:12
how do you sign out without using the start-menu? – anneb Jul 06 '17 at 12:00
Use the Windows key instead. It will work – user2924019 Oct 25 '18 at 14:04

Windows 2012 R2 start button not working over RDP

3 Answers3