Many years ago, I realized that Microsoft did not want anyone to use the Start Menu. I switched to Classic Shell (now Open Shell) and never looked back. Yes, I would recommend this to a friend -- even my mother.
Yeah I use that on one of my machines and essentially had to use it on my mom's machine when the "regular" start menu would crash on open. I haven't been super windows savvy for a decade but various suggested fixes (like sfc, windows rollbacks, malware scans, etc.) did nothing and open shell saved the day!