Windows 10: Missing Desktop icons, taskbar icons changed

This morning when I booted up my desktop, all of my icons on the desktop were missing, although the shortcut is still there and works. The icons in the taskbar now have a generic looking icon. Right clicking on the start menu no longer brings up the menu and when I go to file explorer no icons appear.

How can I get these things back? Everything was working fine yesterday when I logged off and it didn't appeared to have an update.

Please help.

:)

 

My "home" icon is missing from my taskbar

The "Home" icon is not a feature of Windows. See if this is what you're looking for:

Missing "house" icon from desktop taskbar in 8.1 - Microsoft Community

 

No desktop icons and no file properties available

Anna,

Clean boot resulted in no change.

File properties are unavailable.

Icons are missing from desktop, File Explorer, and taskbar but not from Start.

Bill

 

Hi, please have a look at your Update History and check there was no update in that period.

Do you have
a. System Restore enabled, and any appropriate restore points you can use?
b. any recent disk images or system images you can restore? (We constantly and strongly recommend the routine use of disk imaging so people can often get themselves out of difficulty quite quickly and without technical help - e.g. Macrium Reflect (free) + external storage for image sets).

Which build of Windows are you using?
(Windows key + R, winver)

Home or Pro?

As regards your desktop, what do you see if you right click an empty space, hover over View? Is Show desktop icons ticked?

Please check your disk. I don't know if you will be able to run a program easily given the problems you have, but you can
a. download a portable program and try running it
Portable Hard Disk Sentinel Professional Download
or
Portable CrystalDiskInfo Download

(I prefer the first)
and post a screenshot of the GUI.
to post a screenshot please use the Insert Image icon above your post to the left of the video icon

If you can't run those programs, then please download and create Kyhi's bootable disk from the top of the Software and Apps section here. One of its utilities is HD Tune. Boot your PC from that and run HD Tune and advise the result.

Thanks.

 

Last update was done over 10 days ago. system restore is enables, but none worked. version 1607 (OS Build 14393-1358) Pro version Yes Is Show Desktop Icons is ticked.

 

- in what way did they not work? What error number was reported? There is a way to fix a very commonly occurring error number reported in this forum - 80070091 as I recall.

Please do the disk checks as something must have happened to give rise to these symptoms. Thanks.
(If you can install and run a program, then use Hard Disk Sentinel (trial).