Windows 10: Start button & right clicking on taskbar icons suddenly does not work

Something has suddenly changed on my computer (I used the AOL Computer Checkup program yesterday but this problem seems to have started today). Here are the two issues:

• When I left click on the Start Button, nothing happens. If I right click, I get a pop-up menu that is different than the Start page and is all in black and white. I don't know if the right click menu was there before because I don't think I have ever tried that.
• When I right click either the Word or the Excel icons in the taskbar, nothing happens (left clicking still opens the app as usual). In the past, if I right clicked the icon I would get a pop-up menu with the files that I had pinned to the taskbar plus the most recent files that I had used that weren't pinned.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

:)

 

bug report regarding taskbar notifications

Windows 10.

If I right-click on the taskbar and select properties, then click on the "Notification area: Customize" button, I am taken to "Notifications & actions" in the System Settings. From there, if I click "Select which icons appear on the taskbar," the settings
window will close. If I navigate to "Notifications & settings" from the settings button in the start menu and click "Select which icons appear on the taskbar," the window does not close and will actually take me to the correct settings page.

 

Odd behaviour from Windows Taskbar

For some reason, Windows 10 taskbar is behaving in an odd fashion. I am unable to right click on the icons on the taskbar. I am able to launch the application, sure, such as file explorer etc., with the left click, but right clicking on any icon has no
effect.

On the other hand, I am not able to left click on any of the icons in the system tray, but I am able to use the right click to bring up the menu. The same goes for the Start button (Windows button).

So in essence, right click on the icons in the taskbar does not work, and the left click on icons in the system tray, does not work. The opposite action on both, works...

I have restarted the system, and restarted the Windows explorer process as well, to no avail.

Kindly advise.

 

Hi! I'm having this same issue and I haven't found a solution. Still, would you care to try a few other things? They don't work for me, so I'm just curious if they work for you:

• Left-click on the date and time in your task bar. Does this open the calendar?
• Right-click on the icon in the tray (normally next to date and time) that looks like a square conversation baloon. It should open a menu "Open action center" and "Turn on quiet hours". Click on "Open action center". Does the action center open?
• On your keyboard press the [WinButton]+I (hopefully you have the windows button). Click "Personalization" on the screen that opens up. On the left menu click "Start", then click "Use Start full screen" once. Select another option on the left menu (no matter which), then go back to "Start". Did the system remember the change you made to "Use Start full screen"? (Toggling this is often offered as a fix to these issues, so if your system remembers the change, restart your computer, then try to use the start menu. You can always switch back to the way you prefer your start menu by repeating the steps here.)
• Right-click on any empty spot on your taskbar, then open "Search" submenu in the menu that pops up. Click "Show search icon". Does the search icon appear/disappear from your taskbar?
• Click on the search icon when (and if) it's in the taskbar (see previous point). Does anything happen?

By the way, when you right-click on your start menu button, the menu that opens was always there, you just probably never used it. (I too found out about it only when I started having these troubles.)

 

Hi, there are various reasons why this might happen- the start menu is relatively easily broken, unfortunately, as is Cortana.
There are also many threads on this topic, so it's worth searching the forum for a solution, as it has been solved by others.

FIX - Windows 10 Taskbar Not Functioning - Microsoft Community
may be of interest, but it also may not solve your particular problem.

I'm guessing you don't have any useful system restore points and don't use disk imaging, which is really essential to avoid stress and resolving intractable problems easily in a time limited way as well as providing a backup.

Good luck!

 

dalchina, even if I had system restore points, that would not help in my particular case as this issue is present since the very moment I upgraded to Windows 10.

And besides, I'm really tired of these generic solutions. Windows keeps gigabytes of files for the purpose of enabling generic solutions that ultimately break more stuff than they fix, if they ever fix anything at all (without even going into details about the number of times I "restored" a malicious program). Instead it could keep a simple log - user tried to do this (click start button) and this went wrong. User opens log, sees what went wrong, fixes it, and voila, start button works. It would definitely take up much less disk space and when something gets fixed I'd know what was wrong, perhaps even how to prevent it from happening again, and what exactly I did to fix it. As it is, I have no idea, and even if anything ever gets fixed I have no idea how or why and then silly fixes that fix nothing at all - like the one you linked - are written all over the Internet, because in some convoluted scenario on some developer's machine they happened to, or were supposed to work.

 

In that case, good luck mate. Perhaps someone else will have time to help you.

 

same issue with me. I have to restart Windows Explorer in task manager everytime. I also re-enabled cortana in the group policy just in case.

Start menu, search, and right clicking taskbar doesn't work

 

Doubtful. Most problems I've had with Windows simply went away with time. Probably some update or other fixed it. Nobody was ever able to help me directly. *Sad

 

The first fix in the link that Dalchina posted did the trick for me - FIX - Windows 10 Taskbar Not Functioning - Microsoft Community

 

I am having issues with my taskbar clicking too. Right-click some taskbar icons doesn't seem to do anything. Left-clicking Start Icon doesn't seem to do anything either. Left/right click works on other things, so it is not a broken mouse. (Taskbar clicking has not worked as expected for over 3 days in a row. Several restarts did not fix).

Questions/instructions by ReasonSharp, with my answers:
Left-click on the date and time in your task bar. Does this open the calendar?
- No

Right-click on the icon in the tray (normally next to date and time) that looks like a square conversation baloon. It should open a menu "Open action center" and "Turn on quiet hours". Click on "Open action center". Does the action center open?
- Left-clicking "Open action center", no.
- Right-clicking "Open action center", no.
P.S. ReasonSharp typed 'click' but did not specify left or right, so I tried both.

On your keyboard press the [WinButton]+I (hopefully you have the windows button). Click "Personalization" on the screen that opens up. On the left menu click "Start", then click "Use Start full screen" once. Select another option on the left menu (no matter which), then go back to "Start". Did the system remember the change you made to "Use Start full screen"? (Toggling this is often offered as a fix to these issues, so if your system remembers the change, restart your computer, then try to use the start menu. You can always switch back to the way you prefer your start menu by repeating the steps here.)
- Yes, the system remembered the change when I toggled back to start. I restarted my computer, left-clicked 'Start' on the taskbar, and it showed tiles on my desktop, and I don't like it that way. I followed your steps to change it back. Right-clicking programs on the taskbar is working again! Left-clicking 'start' on the taskbar is working again! I clicked to restart my computer, heard an error "ping" that was half-cut off, and saw the screen saying restarting with the swirly thing. After restart, clicking is working as expected

I'm skipping ReasonSharp's next two query's, because my issue is resolved!

Thank you! My issue is resolved!
Solution:

 

For me, at least, I was able to fix the problem of no right clicking action on the task bar and no left clicking action on the start button by disabling a few of the recently added items in startup. I'm not certain which one(s) solved the problem, but it was easy to try (requires rebooting).

I put a few back and it is still fine, but I left 3-4 still disabled (and weren't previously) as I didn't want to bother with all the reboots to figure out which one was the cause...or perhaps just the action of changing things fixed it.

I wish I had more details but details cost time that I don't have. Hope this gives someone another place to start.

 

I was having the same problem. Of the five steps you list I tried the third. By going to Full Screen ON and then back to OFF, The menu came up fine when I left clicked. Thanks!

 

Here's a slightly quicker version of the instructions.
1. Press Ctrl-Shift-Escape to get the task manager.
2. In the Processes tab, click on explorer.exe and click End Process. You'll get a confirmation dialog. Click "End Process" to confirm.
3. From the File menu (still in the task manager), choose New Task (Run...).
4. Copy/paste/enter the following command in the run box:
Code:
cmd /c del %userprofile%\AppData\Local\IconCache.db /a
5. Open the Run box again with File --> New Task (Run...). This time, enter this command:
Code:
explorer.exe
6. All should be okay now. Open the Start Menu and confirm that your icons are fixed now.