I'm having a big problem. I screwed something up with my taskbar and I can't undo it.
I logged on as usual. An annoying message popped up at the lower right corner of the desktop, above, not in, the taskbar, alerting me to something I should download and install that I have no intention of downloading and installing. In the past, each time I've logged on and this message has appeared, I have simply clicked on "cancel" or just clicked the X at its upper right corner. But this time, I must have taken leave of my senses! Instead of just right clicking the X in its right corner, I clicked something else on it and a message window popped up. That message window advised me to either "download" the irrelevant auxiliary toolbar I have no need of and will not download and install, or click "cancel". But it also offered me the chance to click a checkbox next to "do not show this message again on taskbar". At least that's what I recall it said. So I clicked on that, in an attempt to keep it from popping up every time I logged on (removing the annoying message from the action center each time it popped up upon logon never had the effect of preventing it from popping up again the next time I logged on, which is why I tried this "do not show ..." choice this time).
But once I did that, I found I am no longer able to make two things work on my desktop taskbar with the customary left clicks.
It no longer does anything when I left click on the icon to open the action center. If I right click, a menu pops up that includes "open action center", but clicking on that has no effect at all. So right now, the action center is unavailable completely. That by itself is no big deal. I never bothered with it before, so I don't miss it now.
The other problem is a bigger mess. When I left click on the little four-box windows icon at the lower left end of my taskbar, nothing happens at all!So the usual menus, including the choices to log out, sign off, shut down, or switch user from me to my wife and vice versa, are no longer available to us at all! The only way we can shut down or log off (sign off), etc., is if I right click on that icon. Then, a long drop down menu of choices for all sorts of stuff appears, including a segment saying "shut down or sign out", which we can use to do what we used to do after left clicking on the windows icon.
Can anyone suggest how I might recover from this screwup? I did check the possibility of restoring to a previous restore point, but it appears I have not already configured Windows 10 to create any restore points automatically, so I may not have one I could restore to!
I do have incremental hard drive backups, so if I lose some files (Excel, etc.,) by fixing this, that by itself won't be a big issue. But it certainly is a big issue to have screwed up the customary way of logging out or switching from my account to my wife's by not being able to left click the windows icon at the left edge of the taskbar!
Sob....
Any and all help gratefully appreciated!
Hello and welcome to the windowssh blog
Have you done a restart to see if this sorts out the problem? (Note: a Restart does not use the hybrid shutdown process but instead does a full shutdown and restart)
Next thing to try is a repair of the system files: SFC Command - Run in Windows 10
System restore? Do you have that enabled and do you have any useful restore points?
You might be able to see what you installed via
Control PanelAll Control Panel ItemsPrograms and Features
or if it's a toolbar, rt click the taskbar, properties
If you can get out of your difficulties that way, you then need to find what's causing your popup and deal with it of course.
Otherwise, as we don't know what you downloaded, it could be malware, so unless you can find out, safest would be to restore an image. (Good you have those). Of course you could back up any more recent file you think are not on your image first.
Other possible ways to log out etc:
Windows key + X
CTRL + ALT + DEL
