Solved Many Things Suddenly Broken

I am using a Lenovo laptop that folds back into a tablet. Since Windows hides everything (and is broken) I am not sure exactly what model, but it look a lot like this one: ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 11 | 14 inch ultralight, super-powerful Intel® Evo™ laptop. I am using Windows version 22h2 (OS Build 2261.2506).

The salient points being that it switches from keyboard mode to tablet mode, and has a touchscreen (the non-salient points, it has one of those TrackPoint pointers which are awesome). Let me stipulate up fron that none of the issues I'm having are hardware related, because things giving me trouble -- the touchscreen, the keyboard, etc. -- all work in other programs and situations. For example, the touch screen doesn't work on the desktop, but if I open Windows Settings, the touchscreen works within that window (that is, I can scroll). Also important, I think, is that I use the "Automatically Hide the Taskbar " (because what's wrong with the rest of you who don't use that?) and I do not use "Optimize taskbar for touch interactions when this device is a tablet" for the same reason (I want the desktop real estate).

The problems started with a OneDrive pop up telling me to log in, though it had never done so before (it always kept me logged in). When I tried to log in, it just "spun" on the login screen. When I tried to submit a Feedback Report, I got to the last step where I clicked "Submit", and then that also just "spun". I do not know if my report was ever submitted.

I restarted Windows (and had to kill some "task" processes to shut down). OneDrive seemed to be working at that point (but I'm not certain since Quick Access disappeared and now I can't find the directory I had duplicating), so I decided to apply the waiting Windows Update which I dread, since Updates often seems to break things (as I'm sure you all know).

Since applying the updates, the system is broken to the point of unusability. But it didn't break all at once. The first problem was that Quick Access disappeared from File Explorer. When I tried taking a picture (per the request in that thread) the screenshot feature worked, but I took a picture of the wrong window. Then I tried again, but the screenshot feature didn't work. That is, things were changing, and breaking, as I went along.

I'm not sure if all of these symptoms are related, or if I'm having multiple problems, but the main ymptoms I'm having now (I will try to provide pictures or videos of as many as I can) are:

1. Quick Access disappeared from File Explorer. The instructions I find to get it back are just plain wrong.
2. Touch screen doesn't work to raise the Start Menu (before it broke, I was able in both Desktop and Tablet mode to "drag" in from the bottom to raise the Start Menu). The only way to raise the Start Menu is by moving the mouse to the bottom of the screen.
3. The "four square" start menu doesn't work. When I click on it, nothing happens, whether I click it with the mouse, on touch screen, or anything else. However, I can click on other icons in the Task Bar such as File Explorer or Edge, and those work. I can right-click on the "four square" start menu and get a popup menu.
4. Pressing the Window key on the keyboard does nothing. It does not bring up the Task Bar and start menu. However, pressing Window-E does bring up File Explorer.
5. The touch screen works in apps that are open. The touch screen also works when I click on a Desktop item. However, the touch screen does not move the mouse pointer when on the desktop (I'm not sure if it ever did) or open the Start Menu.
6. I have tried toggling the "Optimize taskbar for touch interactions when this device is used as a tablet", but same results.
7. I cannot verify that OneDrive is working because I can't find the directory that I was sharing. But I think it is.
8. It suddenly takes much, much longer to log on.

I think the biggest and most common issue seems to be that clicking on the Start Menu doesn't work. You can see in the video I'm going to try to link that I can't raise the Start Menu, even by clicking on the Start Icon. The video: VID_20231031_121643546.mp4.

Thanks.

In this video, i will show you how to repair install of Windows 11 by performing an in-place upgrade without losing anything.

FreeBooter said:

In this video, i will show you how to repair install of Windows 11 by performing an in-place upgrade without losing anything.

Click to expand...

Thanks. It looks a little scary. I'll won't be able to get to anything like that until this weekend. I'll try it then (if I haven't gotten used to Windows' new bugs by then the way I did with all the old bugs).

It's not all that scary. It should preserve your data, settings, and installed programs. There is a small chance that you might want to re-install some of your software, but that's very unlikely.

However, it's major enough that I recommend imaging your boot drive first.

If you don't have that capability yet, you should (IMHO). There is freeware for the purpose, but you'd need a drive to store the image. I use an internal HDD in the PC, and copy the image to an external drive at intervals. (Probably not often enough.)

bobkn said:

It's not all that scary. It should preserve your data, settings, and installed programs. There is a small chance that you might want to re-install some of your software, but that's very unlikely.

However, it's major enough that I recommend imaging your boot drive first.

If you don't have that capability yet, you should (IMHO). There is freeware for the purpose, but you'd need a drive to store the image. I use an internal HDD in the PC, and copy the image to an external drive at intervals. (Probably not often enough.)

Click to expand...

Will learn how to do that and do it, too, before the reinstall. Thanks.

OK, I was avoiding this thread for a while out of fear of what was going to happen and since I could mostly avoid the system that was having this problem or work around the problem. When I finally came back, everything is back to normal before I started this thread. The only thing wrong now is that I can't get Quick Access to show in File Explorer. Since that is in another thread (that I abandoned) I think I will abandon this thread and return to that one. Sorry to clutter up your otherwise very useful forum.

EDIT: To be clear, it finally fixed itself after about 5 days