Windows – Broken jump lists on Windows 10

I have noticed that all my taskbar and start menu jump lists are broken. They are broken in a very specific way:

• The items show up, but clicking them does nothing (clicking dismisses the jump list, but does not open the corresponding app)
• None of the items show a context menu when right-clicked (an empty gray box appears, as if an empty context menu appeared)
• Jump lists and the context menus work in safe mode

My problem is very similar (if not identical) to the one described in Windows 10 Taskbar JumpList Issue, Not working and in Taskbar > File Explorer > Context Menu failing me and in the related Reddit post and in the related forum post. However, I have more information on the potential cause and more attempted solutions.

There are also two related posts on Microsoft Answers: related post on Microsoft Answers and the other related post, but none of the solutions worked for me (or for the original posters).

I noticed this in Anniversary Update, after updating Visual Studio. Then, I updated to April Update, which fixed the issue. Now, I updated Visual Studio (from 15.6 to 15.7) and it is broken again. The jump lists are broken on both the taskbar and start menu, and they are broken for all apps (both desktop and store).

Things I tried:

• Deleting all files from the AutomaticDestinations directory
• Deleting some files from the AutomaticDestinations directory
• Resetting jump lists from settings
• Reinstalling all Store apps with a PowerShell script
• Running sfc /scannow
• Running dism with restore health option
• Pinning items
• Restarting the computer
• Restarting in safe mode and then restarting again
• Disabling Internet Explorer
• Using the Start Menu troubleshooter: It finds corruptions, but does not apply a fix
• Copying TileDataLayer folder from different computers and then repairing
• Creating a new user account (this also does not work)
• Repairing Visual Studio (it just made Visual Studio slower)
• Restoring the original AppData folder location and creating a junction point to it from the other partition
• Removing all junction points related to Visual Studio
• Completely removing all versions of Visual Studio and fresh installing Visual Studio 2017
• Installing April Update
• Installing October Update
• Using the ShellExView to disable all shell extensions with Context Menu flag and all shell extensions whose File Created time and CLSID Modified Time was after the problems started occurring
• Running the recommended script Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml"} which helps fix similar problems
• Posting an issue on the Visual Studio feedback site and through the Feedback Hub application and waiting for a fix
• Removing all CD/DVD mounting software
• Turning jump lists on and off in the Settings
• Setting the JumpListItems_Maximum in the registry
• Using msconfig to test different startup configurations (disabling all non-Microsoft services – jump lists do not work, diagnostic startup – jump lists do not work; safe-mode – jump lists work)
• Disabling OneDrive (both in startup and from Group Policy) – interestingly, the items that are opened from OneDrive do work; but all other items do not (both clicking and the context-menu).
• Removing all Anti-Virus software

I have some junction points on my C: drive (all in Program Files and ProgramData).

It also seems that Cortana shortcut button (WinKey+C) gets broken whenever jump lists are broken (which is usually within a few days after repair installing Windows 10).

Can anyone provide any clues or suggestions?

Edit 1 (After restoring the default AppData folder)

A peculiar thing happens when accessing the Recent Items folder: when accessed by navigating directly to it in explorer, it does not contain the CustomDestinations and AutomaticDestinations folders, but when accessed by entering the same directory into Run the folders are visible along with many items that do not appear in jump lists.

Edit 2 (After repairing Windows installation)

Even though reupdating system to April Update resolved the problem, the question remains, since the actual cause of the problem is unidentified and I expect it to happen again after another Visual Studio update.

Edit 3 (After a few days)

After about two days of working properly after doing the repair install, my jump lists are not working again. All the history items are shown, but they are again unclickable and the context-menus are empty. Obviously, doing a repair install every few days is not an option. During the few days that the jump lists worked properly, I did not install anything on my system.

Edit 4 (After removing Visual Studio and removing junction points)

After opening Visual Studio 2017 and running a UWP (Microsoft Store) app with a debugger attached, my jump lists were destroyed again.

I decided to remove both Visual Studio 2015 and Visual Studio 2017 and reinstall Visual Studio 2017, remove all junction points I had (I had some junction points for Visual Studio installation), reinstall Visual Studio 2017 and repair install Windows. Removing Visual Studio installations and the junction points did not fix the issue. Repair installing did, as noted in the answer. However, setting up a scheduled task to reinstall Windows ever few days is really not a solution.

Edit 5 (After updating Visual Studio to 15.7.3)

The jump lists are broken again. They have been working for almost a few weeks. After Visual Studio update the jump lists show the same broken behavior.

Edit 6 (After updating Windows 10 to October 2018 Update)

Fixed for five days and then broken again. Possibly related to Visual Studio again. They seem to break when a UWP application is deployed.

Edit 7 (After meddling with startup configuration)

After trying to disable shell extensions, startup items and services, by various means (including msconfig, ShellExView, the Task Manager, the Registry Editor and the Services application), I have concluded that the only state in which the Jump Lists work is safe mode.

Edit 8 (After the insightful answer by Zenithies)

I have realized that I have many 10000, 10001 and 10016 errors in the Event Log. The 10000 and 10001 errors occur after attempting to click on a jump list item. Below are the errors.

Unable to start a DCOM Server: {C82192EE-6CB5-4BC0-9EF0-FB818773790A}.

Unable to start a DCOM Server: {9AA46009-3CE0-458A-A354-715610A075E6} as Unavailable/Unavailable.

The application-specific permission
settings do not grant Local Activation permission for the COM Server application with CLSID {2593F8B9-4EAF-457C-B68A-50F6B8EA6B54} and APPID {15C20B67-12E7-4BB6-92BB-7AFF07997402}

After going through the registry, I identified one of these to be the RuntimeBroker component. I proceeded to see the corresponding component service and noticed I had duplicate entries for rundll32.exe and RuntimeBroker components similar to the Runtime DCOM Server appears twice post. When trying to modify permissions I get the following error.

One or more of the permission entries attached to Registry Value has an unrecognized type and can not be displayed.

The jump list issues can be circumvented by manually calling the jump list component. However, the permission issue still exists and the cause is probably one of the Windows updates, considering that the Runtime Broker component service is duplicated and has a different ID.

The related post has more info on this: Unable to start a DCOM Server.

Edit 9 (After updating Windows to 1903 and Visual Studio to 2019)

As with updates before, the lists were fixed for a couple of days.

The lists are now broken again, but now a menu is shown with the text "This item is unavailable" and prompts to delete it from the list. After running the temporary fix script from Edit 8, the problem is resolved until the next shutdown. I've reported this through Feedback Hub, once again.

Edit 10 (After updating Windows to 2004)

Still broken. Every major Windows update seems to disable the Task Scheduler fix. Re-enabling the scheduled script fixes the problem. However, the cause of the problem is not resolved. This is still only circumventing the problem.