Problems with Lenovo Laptop

[toro1]

I have a Lenovo laptop running Windows 10 and last week is started acting strangely. I have figured out some work arounds, but it seems something is corrupted.
My visible problems are-
1. When I first turn on my computer, my Task Bar comes up as completely empty and when I hover over it with my cursor nothing shows. If I try to pin Brave to the task bar, Brave still doesn?t show, but then all the apps I had show partitions, but there are still no Icons. If I hover over the partition for a couple of seconds, the name of the application shows, but still no Icon. For system things like Volume which used to be there, they show no partitions and when I go into settings they are shown as on, but are gray instead of blue. I have deleted the iconcache database, but it makes no difference.

I run with a metered connection so I haven?t updated anything since July and thought that might fix it. I have gone into to do a manually triggered update, but it gets stuck in ?Checking for Updates? and never progresses beyond that.

The last thing going on is, when I shut down, Task Host stops the Laptop from shutting down and I have to click on the Shut Down Anyway box. The path on Task Host shows something in the Language section as being the cause.

I have run antimalwarebytes and superantispyware and they both show the computer as clean

I thought I would check in with the smart people here before taking it to a Computer Doc.

TIA for any and all ideas.

[Preston-CLB]

If you have a reputable tech nearby, see what they would charge to get your machine up and running correctly.

As mentioned, you could save your data to an external hard drive and the reinstall Win 10 using the MS Media Creation Tool.

This tool will help you download the OS onto a USB stick that you would then boot into to reinstall Windows.

You will likely need to go to the Lenovo site and download and install any Lenovo specific drivers after Windows is installed.

After all that, and Windows is up and running, you would then reinstall any apps and transfer your data back to the laptop.

It will take time to do all this, but if you are patient and work through the steps you should be fine.

Questions:

Have you had any hard drive failure errors, overheat warnings, or Blue Screen (BSOD) crashes?

If you have a BSOD, it will give you an error code that you can look up to see what caused the crash. (A tech would like this info, as well)

Hope you get it fixed!
-P

[Tikka3x]

Backup everything to an external hard drive or use Google drive backup. Create a bootup disk and then buy a new SSD. Install new SSD and reinstall Win 10.
Just had to do this on the wife's Lenovo laptop. I'm not super computer literate but with YouTube it made it do-able.

[WoodTurner]

Couple things to check.
Make sure your drive isn't full. SSD especially will go crazy if you fill it up.
Hit Ctrl+shift+ESC to bring up task manager. Check to see if anything is getting loaded down such as CPU and RAM utilization.
Try windows safe mode and see if you still have problems. If you don't it's possibly something that's auto starting at system startup that is causing the problem. Should be able to check startup apps while in safe mode and turn off any you don't need. See if it helps.

[toro1]

Thanks All. The reason I haven't downloaded all of my stuff to my backup harddrive is I am not sure I don't have a virus and don't want to corrupt it if I do. I hadn't thought about using something like Google drive backup and will look into that.

Loanman,
FWIW, my Lenovo has been bulletproof for the 3 years I have had it. If I end up buying something new, I'll look into Asus.

Tikka, were the problems with your wife's computer similar to mine or something completely different.

Preston,
There have been no failures that I have seen. This just started happening last week on the first startup of the day.

Woodturner,
Thanks for the thoughts. I'll check the SSD to see if its close to being full and try starting in safe mode to see if there is any change.

Worst case I'll go visit the computer doc and see what he says.

[Tikka3x]

In my case the computer took forever to boot up, sometimes the Taskbar would show or would be unresponsive and did a complete wipe of the computer and reinstalled windows and it still didn't help. Had showed no errors.

[ldsnet]

Microsoft is trying to sundown Windows 10.... The last service pack update was 22H2, the End of Service date is Oct2025. if your computer is capable of Windows 11, it may be trying to download it in the background (it no longer askes, it just does it as part of the upgrade plan that you can't turn off).

[toro1]

For whatever reason everything is working again. I was getting ready to boot up in safe mode and my Icons all appeared. I had checked task manager many times while trying to figure things out and usually the CPU use was below 10%, and memory use was just below 90%. After the icons returned, I checked and the CPU usage was still the same, but memory use was down to ~50%. At this point I am guessing something was hung up using memory, but not really running, but not being computer savvy, I have no idea if that is possible.

I downloaded and installed the missing updates and backed up my data so if it reverts to non-cooperation, I shouldn't loose anything. Thanks to all for the help and ideas.

[Iknownot]

I would have guessed your SSD was starting to fail. You may want to download and run crystal disk info and see what it says about your drive status.

If your drive is marginal, SSDs are so cheap now it’s a good time to update and get a larger size even.

In any case I’m of the opinion it’s a good idea to back up and do a fresh install of windows every year, maybe 2 at most. Windows gets clunky after a year or two of use sometimes.

Back up all your stuff and do a clean install of Win 11. Win 10 Is going to get sunseted in a year or two anyway.

[UnitedWeStand]

Power on and tap or hold down F10 to get to Lenovo diagnostic. Run all test and see if any hardware failed. Can also backup data and do a factory restore.

[bayrooster]

If you can afford it. Get a quality ASUS. I had a Lenovo and had glitches as well. Traded it in since it started acting up 3 days after purchase. Someone here might be able to get your machine up. If you make a backup of your data you could wipe the hard drive and reinstall Windows

I bought my dad a nice Asus laptop last Christmas, and learned just a couple of months later that his dog knocked a large glass of iced tea onto the keyboard. Between a 5 year old and my dad, I guess it's a toss-up who can take better care of a laptop. Anyway, it's amazingly still working after draining the mess and cleaning up the keyboard -- it did say military grade on one of the labels...