Cannot open any program in windows 10, no access to systems, control , commandline , nothing

Question

When starting my pc, the usual desktop with icons remains empty. The toolbar is visible and when i press on an icon they will enlarge to thumbnail size. When i press angain to enlarge, the thumbnail disapears. I cannot get into any program, settings, computer management or backup restore programs. This problem is occuring since tuesday morning. Monday everything seems fine. Has anyone got any ideas how to resolve this problem. I ofcourse tried te soft reset, onoff button for 15 secs as well as unplugging.

Answer 1

Sounds like anything from malware to a corrupt profile.

Start Windows in safe mode. The instructions are here. There are several ways to get there but from the login screen, based upon the docs, hold Shift while clicking the Restart button under Power.

When Windows restarts select the Troubleshoot option, Advanced Options, Startup Settings. Then click Restart and on the restart menu select Safe Mode. Once in safe mode see if the desktop icons show up and things behave correctly. If so things might be working again so you could restart and log in normally.

Otherwise create a new user profile. Then restart Windows and log in using the new profile. If things are still corrupt it isn't your profile. It could be malware, a corrupt OS install (although I cannot imagine what) or perhaps a keyboard/mouse failure that is causing inputs to be sent to Windows. At this point, assuming you've already scanned for malware, your best option might be to repair Windows.

If creating a new user profile worked then copy your desktop, documents, etc from the old profile folder to the new one before you remove the old profile.

Answer 2

@susan munday
Hi,
You should try running sfc can in safe mode.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/use-the-system-file-checker-tool-to-repair-missing-or-corrupted-system-files-79aa86cb-ca52-166a-92a3-966e85d4094e

For your reference:
Recovery options in Windows 10
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/recovery-options-in-windows-10-31ce2444-7de3-818c-d626-e3b5a3024da5
If it was a user account error.
You should set up a new user for the PC and transfer everything over to that profile.

Hope above information can help you.

============================================

If the Answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and upvote it.
Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.