Some apps don't show up in start menu search results

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BillG123ABC

Hi there experts,


For a few weeks now I have been having a problem where some applications -- but not all -- just don't show up when I type into the start menu search. For example, I might launch Firefox by just typing "fir", at which point Firefox becomes the Best Match, and I hit Enter to launch. This has been my default navigation method for many years.


Recently, though, some applications -- some of which were installed a while ago, some of which are more recent -- just don't show up in the Search at all. There's no rhyme or reason to it either. I installed Office 2019, and none of those applications can be found when searching by name (e.g. typing in "word" will give me WordPad, but not MS Word).


I'm running Windows 10.0.19041 Enterprise. Things I've tried so far:

  • Rebuilding the search index
  • Ensuring that the various start menu folders are specifically being indexed and not excluded (like C:\Users\$username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs)
  • Changing the indexer from "Classic" to "Enhanced"
  • Manually restarting the Windows Search service via the services window
  • Enabling/disabling Cortana
  • Running the search & indexing troubleshooter -- interestingly, whenever I run this I always get "Problems Found: Windows Search is not working", and then marks that problem as "Fixed" (it's definitely not fixed -- I can run troubleshooter over and over again and it will always say it's not working and then fixed)
  • Running SFC and DISM. Neither report any errors/issues.
  • Making a new localadmin user. So this does seem to work somewhat - a different set of apps shows up in the results, though again not all (and I'm pretty sure I've installed every application "for all users" so nothing should be specific to my user account).


I'm out of ideas, and haven't found anything left on the Internet that I haven't tried already. I'm not going to "refresh" or reinstall windows to fix this if that means I have to reinstall all of my apps, but I would love to hear any other suggestions or troubleshooting tips.


Thanks!

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