Windows 10: Various Odd Problems.

For starters, I have a pretty badly organised desktop, so my screen is filled with icons.

Every now and then, I'll see all of the icons re-render themselves (no idea why - nothing I've done). Here they flash white, then redraw themselves. However, after this, the normal 'link' icon that appears at the bottom-left of shortcuts changes, usually to a cross. (see picture -- https://puu.sh/yyuP0/54bccd5aa4.png)

Whilst the icons are like this, right clicking on something and hovering over "Open With >" causes Explorer to freeze. This usually results in it rebooting itself (just explorer.exe, that is).

Oddly enough, during this time, both Groovy (or whatever MS 10's new fancy audio player is called) and WMP (what I'd usually use), "don't have the codec" to play M4A files. After a fresh reboot (or sometimes, randomly) it can play them.

The thing that caused me to post on here was that I have a PNG (with transparency) on my dekstop (it's a heatmap from a game), and that overwrote itself onto the usual shortcut icon.

Something fishy is going on here. Does anyone have any ideas? I have included a list of my running processes (through Process Hacker 2).

:)

 

Signs appearing in text.

This a example of what is displayed (You’re ) there are other odd signs in various forms of message,has any one else had this problem?.

 

power settings for windows 10 desktop pc

My monitor goes black at various odd times. I can turn it back on by moving my mouse or hitting Esc. But it should not be going black. What can I do to fix this problem?

 

Is your taskbar refreshing along with the icons? Could be explorer crashing or your thumbnail cache is corrupt.

As for the files not playing....maybe a side effect of explorer being the culprit...dunno.

Does the event viewer show any errors around the times of the occurrences?

 

Sometimes the icons are like this: https://puu.sh/yyxau/1314436443.png

It's not explorer itself (as the icons stay on the screen, the taskbar is normal and the window controls are normal).

How would I clear/rebuild the cache?

 

The green checkbox on the icon? Do you have any sort of file sync/cloud software running?

 

Hmm. I have Dropbox, but I only use that to share very few files, so that shouldn't be it. It's just changed to this: https://puu.sh/yyxO4/8b53cb3579.png

 

When did this start happening?

Are you also using a Microsoft account?

 

I'm not really too sure when it started happening, but it would have been within the last two months.

Yes, I am on a Microsoft account, all of the windows stuff is legit and I am on the latest update.

 

OneDrive will sync your desktop to the cloud by default as of FCU. I unchecked desktop under OneDrive settings.

 

No, Desktop wasn't syncing by default for me. That might be because my OneDrive is almost full.

 

That green check circle sure looks like a successful sync/uptodate indicator.

I know it seems pointless, but I’d stop OneDrive syncing completely and disable Dropbox for awhile just to see if it stops.

Have you installed any new programs in the last 2 months?

 

I disabled them and restarted explorer.exe (with task manager).

I suspect there's some sort of database or cache issue here. I have a really fast SSD, and (most) things take no time to load. However, restarting explorer.exe made the taskbar icons (for active windows) take a lot longer than usual (it also hung the start menu).

As for installed applications, yes. Many.

Maybe the culprits are some video codecs I had to help with importing some video into a couple of older programs?

I'd take a stab in the dark and say it's more likely to be some shell extension that I have.

 

I see the Desktop rearranging at times and have to keep in mind the screen is Dynamic, not Static like a picture on the wall. Dynamic means it is constantly redrawing/refreshing, sometimes stays the same way for long periods, sometimes not so much. Since File Explorer and Internet Explorer seem to be well-integrated I don't think such changes can be completely avoided.

 

Yes, it redrawing itself is fine. However, when it overlays odd things (I didn't capture it in time, but I just had the Audacity program icon overlayed over every single shortcut on the dekstop), I don't want that. I'm going to go through a couple of things and disable them, to see if I can reach a fix.