Taskbar not responsive

Hi all,
since yesterday evening I noticed a strange behaviour on my Win11 Home.
The login phase takes 10/15 seconds instead of the usuale 2/3 and when i'm logged in the taskbar is not appearing for a couple of minutes and when it does I can't click on anything below there (even the windows menu doesn't appear).
I already tried sfc, dism and an in place upgrade but everything fails: can i attach some logs to help the troubleshooting ?
I also tried to uninstal AMD driver in order to have a clean situation.

Thanks all in advance

Do you have fast startup/hibernation turned on? Maybe the hiberfil file is corrupt?
Tiurn off fast startup/hibernation and restart the device.

pivsxii said:

the taskbar is not appearing for a couple of minutes and when it does I can't click on anything below there (even the windows menu doesn't appear)

Click to expand...

Perhaps the display adapter driver has become corrupted in use.
- If the display adapter was part of the computer when the factory sent it out then go to the computer maker's support site to download & re-install the display driver.
- If the display adapter was not part of the computer when the factory sent it out then go to the display adapter maker's support site to download & re-install the display driver.

Many of us despair of Windows update's habit of badly updating hardware drivers and have stopped WU being able to do so.
Enable or Disable Include Drivers with Windows Updates - ElevenForumTutorials
This does mean you'll need to check for driver updates yourself.
I use this for my Intel hardware driver updates How to Use Intel Driver n Support Assistant, contains download link
- When it finds new updates, I always click on its link for more info so that I get taken to a different page that allows me to download the update without installing - I can then install it when I feel like it and I can copy it to other computers to install on them when appropriate.
I backup my drivers after every change.Backup and Restore Device Drivers - ElevenForumTutorials


Denis

---

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Hi Denis,
I used DDU just to be sure that the display driver was not the problem, but unfortunately the issue remains.

pivsxii said:

I used DDU just to be sure that the display driver was not the problem

Click to expand...

How did you determine that it was not the problem?

Denis

Try3 said:

How did you determine that it was not the problem?

Denis

Click to expand...

By the fact that I still have the issue. Without AMD driver I'm still unable to click on the taskbar. Also by using sfc and DISM it seems a windows corruption, not driver's one (but it's only a guess at this point)

I wanted to know what you did so I could understand what had been proved.
I imagined you meant that you removed then reinstalled the display driver but I just wanted to check that was what you meant.

Booting into Safe mode is also a way of proving that the display driver is not at fault. Safe mode uses a basic MS display driver not the normal one so, if the problem is still evident, the display driver is not the cause.


Denis

Try3 said:

I wanted to know what you did so I could understand what had been proved.
I imagined you meant that you removed then reinstalled the display driver but I just wanted to check that was what you meant.

Booting into Safe mode is also a way of proving that the display driver is not at fault. Safe mode uses a basic MS display driver not the normal one so, if the problem is still evident, the display driver is not the cause.


Denis

Click to expand...

I uninstalled with DDU and not reinstalled for the moment. Even in safe mode i got the issue with a specific error in the login page before actually loggin' in (tonight I'll check the exact words within the popup)

pivsxii said:

a specific error in the login page

Click to expand...

What error?

Just in case, note these so you're ready if one is seen to be relevant:-
Fix User Profile Service Failed the Sign-in Error in Windows 10 and 11 - TenForumTutorials
How to Fix "We can't sign into your account" and 'You've been signed in with a temporary profile' Error in Windows 10 and 11 - TenForumTutorials


Denis

No, I don't have login problem. It's only slower than normal and after that there are issues with explorer.exe (can't click on taskbar, alt tab works in strange way..)
The issue on login page appears only on safe mode with a dialog called "sihost.exe" with a text "Unknown hard error"

Could it be worth to upload CBS.log and down.log?

wiganken said:

Do you have fast startup/hibernation turned on? Maybe the hiberfil file is corrupt?
Tiurn off fast startup/hibernation and restart the device.

Click to expand...

Tried but nothing changed unfortunately

pivsxii said:

I already tried sfc, dism and an in place upgrade but everything fails

Click to expand...

Please explain what "everything fails" means.
- sfc, dism and an in place upgrade fail
or
- sfc, dism and an in place upgrade run but fail to fix the Taskbar etc problem


Denis

I also suggest testing another user account to see if it is also affected.
If you do not already have another local user account, create one for this test & give it a decent password so you can retain it for future use. Tutorial links for creating local user accounts are in my ditty - Create two spare local, password-protected Admin accounts [post #2] in Windows 10, 11 - TenForums

Is there a reason for staying on 24H2 rather than updating to 25H2?


Denis

Try3 said:

Please explain what "everything fails" means.
- sfc, dism and an in place upgrade fail
or
- sfc, dism and an in place upgrade run but fail to fix the Taskbar etc problem


Denis

Click to expand...

Sfc ends with (translated from Italian)

Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files but was unable to fix some of them

Dism tells me that the image is recoverable but DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth ends with error 0x800f0915 (both online and with a local ISO just downloaded from MS site)
In place upgrade ends with an error in the MIGRATE phase

Please find attached logs for these operation

Try3 said:

I also suggest testing another user account to see if it is also affected.
If you do not already have another local user account, create one for this test & give it a decent password so you can retain it for future use. Tutorial links for creating local user accounts are in my ditty - Create two spare local, password-protected Admin accounts [post #2] in Windows 10, 11 - TenForums

Is there a reason for staying on 24H2 rather than updating to 25H2?


Denis

Click to expand...

I'm on 25H2 and I'm unable to access the users (or settings) page since it tells me that I don't have any program to run it

pivsxii said:

Sfc ends with (translated from Italian)

Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files but was unable to fix some of them

Click to expand...

The forum's SFC tutorial tells you how to extract the list of corrupt files into a small text file for posting & what to do to fix those files.
SFC - ElevenForumTutorials

pivsxii said:

I'm unable to access the users (or settings) page since it tells me that I don't have any program to run it

Click to expand...

You did not state this in your OP.
Try searching the forum for that issue.
I suspect that you'll end up having to do a Clean install unless you have a system image you can restore.

pivsxii said:

In place upgrade ends with an error in the MIGRATE phase

Click to expand...

That sounds to me like a computer that's not compliant with Windows 11 hardware requirements.
I assume you followed the relevant tutorial.
Repair Install Windows 11 with an In-place Upgrade - ElevenForumTutorials


Denis

Thank you Denis for your interest on my issue :)

The forum's SFC tutorial tells you how to extract the list of corrupt files into a small text file for posting & what to do to fix those files.
SFC - ElevenForumTutorials

Click to expand...

Please find attached the details file.

You did not state this in your OP.
Try searching the forum for that issue.
I suspect that you'll end up having to do a Clean install unless you have a system image you can restore.

Click to expand...

I have the same feeling but I don't want to reinstall all my apps and redo all the configuration. I didn't mention that because the first issue is the taskbar not be responsive at startup, the other is a consequence

That sounds to me like a computer that's not compliant with Windows 11 hardware requirements.
I assume you followed the relevant tutorial.
Repair Install Windows 11 with an In-place Upgrade - ElevenForumTutorials

Click to expand...

I'm been using Windows 11 on this PC for a couple of years now so it can't be a compatibility issue. And yes I use the guide to make the inplace repair with the ISO provided from MS

I think your only hope is the Dism command stated in the yellow text after Option 1 step 3 of the tutorial.

Brink said:

run the Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth (requires Internet connection) command to repair any component store corruption, restart the computer afterwards

Click to expand...

Denis

hader said:

You can search and search. There is a final solution for such situations; Do a In-Place-Installment. It will leave your data alone and only replaces the current Windows 11 Home 25H2 engine. At the start turn off search for updates (when finished it will search for updates also. This speeds things up somewhat.) because it will "downgrade" this engine back to it initial release. But as soon this has been done; An update will bring the build-version back to the latest build available. (Will only download the latest version)

Place the original downloaded 25H2 ISO on some drive, mount it and start setup.exe when you are running Windows. By this way you rule out that there is something wrong with Windows itself. When you still have these problems; you know now; it's not Windows that is causing this issue. You can spent days for searching for the culprit, Now it can possible solve the issue within a hour. (or a bit more)

Click to expand...

Thank you Hader but unfortunately I've already tried that solution downloading an ISO from ma official site, but the update fails with an error like "..during MIGRATE_DATA in the SAFE_OS..".

A couple of posts ago I also attached logs of that phase