Windows 10: Windows 10's taskbar won't let me open things.

I've been having a recurring issue with my computer since a couple of weeks ago, and since then no AVG scan or even restarting it has permanently fixed the problem.

The problem happens to be that sometimes, I'll have Google Chrome open and maybe want to open Photoshop to work on some art I'm doing, and my taskbar won't respond. At all. If I minimize, say, Skype while I'm having this issue, Skype won't open. Sometimes it's only a couple apps on my taskbar that will respond; Paint might open, but Discord won't.

Occasionally it even extends to my desktop, in which I am unable to open a program via clicking on its desktop shortcut. Right now my taskbar icons have gone so far to even vanish, leaving only extra bits (like Skype's offline icon) as proof they're even there. Restarting it fixes the problem, but only briefly.

Some notes:

-I am fairly young and mostly use this laptop (HP Pavilion) for playing games, chatting with friends, drawing, writing and blogging.
-This laptop is old enough that its warranty has expired recently. I have had it for about two years.
-I started having this problem around uninstalling the trial version of AVG PC Tune-Up, after its messages to make me buy the full version annoyed the hell out of me.
-I can't actually open my settings to check the key info of my PC right now.
-Here's a photo of what I've been going through.




So is this just a silly Windows 10 glitch, or is there a deeper-rooted problem my anti-virus is failing to uncover?

:)

 

Start Menu/Search Won't Open and Unable to Right-click Taskbar Icons

Hello, my laptop has been recently updated to windows 10 it worked fine for 2-3 days. Now it won't let me open my start menu, search or right-click on taskbar icons. I've looked around and the only solutions I've found is the one that involves opening
powershell and then right-clicking it to open in administrator which I cannot do since I cannot right-click on taskbar icons. If anyone had any advice or could help me I would very much appreciate it!

 

Why do two of my three dvd draws open every time I boot up windows 10 (not when restarting).

Hi!

I performed the update via the internet using the windows 10 icon in the taskbar. I did this yesterday.

When the draw(s) open, windows explorer opens with a foreground window asking me to insert a disc into the drive. I cannot access anything else at that point until I select "cancel" in the window.

I am trying the open file explore to This PC.

Will let you know.

Thanks,

James.

 

That particular piece of, uhm software, is not quite good. Better stick with CCleaner and Wise Care 365.

Download this Fix, run it as admin, it will take about an hour to finish, then choose to clean everything.

 

A big ditto with TairikuOkami.

A numbers of programs are using MSI based installers which stores their uninstallers, icons (as .exe file; say wordicon.exe) and some other important information in a hidden directory, C:\Windows\Installer. MS Office, CorelDraw, Chrome, Adobe Reader etc are some of those programs I can name right now.

AVP PC TuneUp (previously TuneUp Utilities; I have used that program for years) is nothing but a crap. It has a bad tendency to clean up the Installer folder considering it as junk. You will loss the program icons, functionalities upto some extent and some other things. It affects the imageres.dll file too, where the system icons are stored.

As it kills the uninstallers too, it may not be very possible all the time to uninstall a damaged program. So uninstallation and re-installation of the programs also will not be very easy.
As I had noticed, installing the program over the corrupt installation may or may not solve the issue. There is no certainty.

So it is neither Windows 10 nor antivirus. It is just the PC TuneUp crap that is the reason behind your issue. It is something more than a snake oil, it is harmful.

I wishfully hope that TairikuOkami's suggestion will work for you. But if for any reason it does not, prefer a complete clean reinstall. It would be much easier than fixing the level of corruption caused by TuneUp.

And, never ever use any third party disk cleaner/optimizer/SwissArmyKnife program. Only CCleaner is trustworthy as TairikuOkami as already mentioned.