Windows 10: Quickbar Stop Combining Icon With Program Window

Hey all,

Recently downgraded to windows ten (didn't have a choice in the matter). Getting really annoyed that my quicklinks will only open one instance of the program I want, then the newly opened program window will take over that quicklink. Gone, it seems, are the days I can quickly open three windows of the file explorer to start micromanaging files in multiple locations.

Is there a way to obtain that functionality again? I've already had to remove windows' store, turn off half the stupidly unnecessary services, and gut out the registry, what else do I have to do to make this UI function like the windows XP UI?

:)

 

File Explorer Woes?

Windows 10 machine here.

HP, with an AMD A8-6500 APU with Radeon HD Graphics 3.50 GHz.

8 GB of RAM.

64-bit Operating system, x64-based processor.

I am having an issue I can't seem to pinpoint. It might have something to do with File Explorer but I think I am getting a few red herrings. First of all, my computer was working well until last Friday. I logged back onto it this morning and I seem to have
issues whenever I try to use something baked into the operating system.

Here are a few examples.

Logging on takes ages now. I am running the operating system on an SSD and it definitely takes longer than usual. Right clicking on an item will bring up a contextual menu but it will take longer than usual (like 5/10 seconds maybe?). I would look at task
manager to examine load but I can't (more below).

I noticed this morning there was a missing icon on my desktop's quickbar:





That's Windows 10's calculator icon. I can still click "on it" and I will still get the calculator. I also have another blank icon like that, and that's for OneNote.

The quickbar will launch maybe a couple of programs then it will crash (and I think that is file explorer crashing) and the quickbar won't have any icons at all. Eventually they will reappear (I guess File Explorer restarted).

My other programs such as Chrome, Illustrator, antivirus (which I ran and found nothing), etc. all work. However due to the quickbar acting up I have to use alt+tab to get to the program I want, and that once failed to work as well and I had to restart the
computer.

Pressing on the Windows button on the quickbar or the Windows button on the keyboard will not bring the start menu and the quickbar will crash.

When I right click on my wallpaper and get the contextual menu, I then click on personalise to change it and get this error message:





When I do open file explorer and then I want to, say, right click on an item, maybe to access the menu to delete it, I will get a spinning wheel and I won't be able to do anything.

ctrl+alt+delete will bring up the security options, then I click on task manager but I get a blank window with the title "task manager" and nothing else. Again, spinning wheel, and when I click on close I get "Task manager is not responding" at which point
I have to force close it.

I would tell you what updates I have installed, but I can't access the update panel, not even typing a search in Cortana. Cortana does find it, but when I click on it it doesn't open up. Because of these issues I have had to restart the computer 3 times
just to get to a point where something wouldn't crash.

I was able to access the hardware manager when I could type into Cortana (once the quickbar crashes and restarts it becomes unresponsive so I can't even use my search). The Hardware Manager is in the "Windows desktop" style. It's almost like everything that
works within the modern ui doesn't work, but the "old" desktop things work. If I can get more data such as hardware specs I will add them to this thread.

Thanks in advance.

 

How to condense taskbar left-side search and multi-desktop spacing?

I have less space now to fit quickbar shortcuts because the search icon and multi-desktop buttons take up three times the space of their icons.





How do I shrink these?