Recently, when I click on the Start button at lower left, the menu that pops up will only show Run, Help and Support, Search, Settings, Documents, Programs, then the horizontal line above which there are supposed to be about a half-dozen application shortcuts and the Show Desktop icon. Problem is, it gets no further that the line. Sometimes I can wait five or so seconds and the items of the line will populate. Other times, I have to start over and re-click Start. Sometimes more than once. Any clues on what's going on?1 person got this answerI do too

No hardware changes. As far as software, I've removed all old software I don't use and generally cleaned house. The only part of that recent has been using Microsoft's Autoruns to identify third-party startup items that I either don't need or can change their status under Services. Been turning off one or two a week after researching them on the internet, going slowly to make sure no problems. I've got very good anti-virus with Norton 360 Premiere (it's also a good firewall). Use Malwarebytes Anti-malware Pro to run regular scans for that.Only been facing the issue off and on for about two weeks. I have wondered if this might be a memory problem, but I've got 2GB total virtual memory.Went into Safe mode and tried to simulate the environment where this has happened; Firefox running, Thunderbird running, (off course neither could connect to the Web in Safe mode), and WinAmp running. WinAmp would not play from the playlist of files on my hard drive for some reason. Anyway, in Safe mode the menu that pops up from the Start button works just fine. When I restarted into regular mode it was still working fine.Can't figure out why this is sporadic?