In contrast to former versions of Windows, the start menu of Windows 10 is not entirely and directly based on a directory structure anymore. Instead, there's a process reading those directories under certain circumstances and writing entries into some intermediate database, from which the content of the start menu is then build. The reading process as well as the intermediate database have certain limitations, like only 500 entries at all in the past, entries not being updated regularly or at all or soon enough etc. In fact, this process is very fragile and there are a lot of problems associated with it.
A new Start menu, not necessarily a better one
How to fix / refresh start menu in Windows 10? How to add / remove / edit items in bulk?
Some Win32 apps missing from Start menu "All Programs" list and search
I'm running into one of those problems right now: There's one folder successfully shown in the start menu, most likely because the associated app installed itself per user. Though, the installer created two links in that folder, while only one is shown and when adding an additional one manually, that never shows at all. I've tried to add some new directories with some additional new links etc. as well and none of those showed at all.
In the above screenshot one can see that the start menu only shown one link within the directory Zoom, while at least the additional link to uninstall has been available right from the start. The one named Mittwochsrunde has been added by me weeks ago already and doesn't show yet as well.
Though, it's not that all changes are ignored always: When I hide the directory Zoom using file system attributes, the directory is hidden in the start menu as well. When I change to show again, the entry in the start menu is there again. What doesn't work even after hiding/showing is that the additional links will be shown in the start menu. Of course all other Voodoo one can read about somewhere like deleting the index of Windows Search etc. doesn't help as well, did that multiple times already.
OTOH, there needs to be some way to add start menu entries because I installed Visual Studio 2022 yesterday and all of those entries are visible in the start menu. So I guess the problem is the process mentioned above reading the file system vs. providing entries in the start menu using some installer and API.
So, is there any way to make the underlying process/database of the start menu reliably re-index the file system objects like directories and files?
Thanks!
