Has the issue that threw the Cortana/Start Menu critical error been fixed?

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I've been running Windows 10 on a local account and I haven't had the issue in a while. I used to get it all the time, but not anymore. What always fixed mine whenever it occured was just hard-booting the computer and booting it back up. Regular shutdowns didn't fix anything.

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I am still having this problem, last time was yesterday, 21 Oct.
I was very surprised to see so many different forums had the suggestion that removing Avast was the fix.  I took my time and ignored those people long enough to find that rebooting in safe mode clears up the missing Start, but I am still not sure about the number of people stating that the problem never came back after they removed Avast.

It does look like coincidence and people imagining a correlation.  Glad I found a more sensible solution, but hope the problem goes away soon.

The explanation is really very simple:
Using the Avast removal tool forces the system to reboot into Safe Mode to remove the parts of Avast that can't be removed
while in regular mode.
That reboot into safe mode to clean up and finish the Avast removal also meets the fix for the actual Microsoft fix to the Microsoft problem.

You are not completely right. I had this issue with "critical error" many many times on W10 with Avast. After a few weeks I decided to clean reinstall W10 on my PC, installed Avast, 3-4 days passed and bam, critical error was here again. So I reinstalled W10 again, this time with another AV program (so NO safe mode reboot) and you know what? Errors are gone! I'm not saying that Avast is the cause of these issues, it rather looks like some other AV's just behaves the way that prevents W10 to fall into erroneous state, like boot slowdown etc..

[LesF]

Unfortunately it isn't fixed forever, it has happened several times now.  At least I know the quick way to overcome whatever is screwed up now.