The problem is irritating. After logging into Windows 10, left clicking on the Start Menu, and Search Bar on the left, or the Action Center, Volume control, and Network icon on the right does nothing. You can right click these items, but a left click does nothing. Also Windows Store does not work. Note, this only happened with domain users. Local users were unaffected.
We were running Windows server 2003 domain controllers, and the domain was set as a 2003 domain. We upgraded our DC to Windows server 2012 R2, and adjust the domain level accordingly, but had the same problem.
I spent many hours fighting this issue. I scoured the Internet trying to find a solution. They all boiled down to basically this page here, and none of them worked. By now you are going, “It is your group policy you idiot.” That is what we thought. We made a temporary OU, moved our test computers and users into it and turned off all the group policies. Still no dice.
I did some more desperate Googling and found out that people were mentioning Windows firewall. I went to change my Windows firewall settings and was unable to. Upon further investigation the Windows firewall service was disabled (obviously we missed something in our GP removal). I set the service to start automatically, rebooted and voila working start menu. I mean obviously who wouldn’t make their start menu dependent upon their firewall service. Duh.
I just thought I would post this in case some one else was having the same problem.
Just a side note: Windows firewall does not need to be turned on in Control Panel, the service just has to be running.
EDIT: Windows Firewall service needs to be started. Simply setting the service to start automatically is not enough.