[MikeSuff]

So my Surface 3 updated itself yesterday, and when I woke up today the majority of the icons I had pinned to my taskbar and my start menu are gone. I've been able to find and pin programmes like "Weather" back to the start menu, but others have completely disappeared, most frustrating of all is Edge.

I can open Edge if I open Cortana and select a news item. When I do that Edge opens full screen, but doesn't deposit an icon on the task bar, so I can't select it. Also, when I swipe in from the left or choose Task View, Edge does not show as an available programme. Changing in and out of tablet mode does nothing.

Thoughts? This is driving me nuts.

Also, my PC is just fine.

[_Emi_]

That's weird.
but first you could run sfc /scannow

if there are error that sfc didn't fix you could try Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth which is explained here DISM - Repair Windows 10 Image - Windows 10 Forums

you could also try to run this on powershell
Get-AppxPackage -AllUsers| Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register “$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml”}

it will go through every appxmanifest on the list and reinstall it. like if you open the start menu you can see some apps reinstalling like when you do it through the store. so nothing critical about it. (it might give an error with Microsoft.Windows.ShellExperienceHost_cw5n1h2txyewy!App package, that's just because it can't access to it. but it's not a bad error or something to panic about)

it's strange your icons disappeared but maybe these things can help. I have tested sfc and get-appxpackage and it fixed what I messed yesterday when I deleted Edge folder and all. so if it doesn't help, it won't make it worse. still you could do a system restore point if you want before trying them.

You could have gone to restore point when you woke up and saw your system strange with missing icons. but I don't know if you would do it now that some hours have passed.

[phelme]

Similar problem here, but worse with my Surface Pro 2 with the latest update. the Start Menu is gone and won't open, the Action Center too and clicking on Cortana does nothing. Based on the noise I've seen on the Microsoft support site, they broke a lot of people. It's almost like a layer is hidden, because sometimes I swear I see a flash of the start menu intact. I'm actually not getting the Critical error message though, it's simply not working.

The odd thing is the local accounts on the SP2 are fine, it's just the ones with a.Microsoft account that are hosed.

Edit: I found this site that has a number of helpful hints for fixing it. For me, starting up the Application Identity service fixed the desktop not showing up and running the listed Get-AppXPackage command via PowerShell restored the Start Menu (and Action Center).