System restore failure and no icons or thumbnails in Win 10

Hey Everyone,




I was using my laptop last week to find all taskbar icons were all using a default icon and that the desktop icons and file explorer icons had all gone completely blank (no icons or Thumbnails).
I also cant right click and get Properties to work on Drives in file explorer.


System Restore no longer works, I get a "Catastophic falure" warning dialogue everytime i open the panel to create restore points.
If I open the "system" menu the written options down the lefthand side are no longer there. If I open Control Panel and it is set to display by catagory there is nothing on the screen, but if I choose view small icons then the text comes up but no icons.
Apart from these problems all programs function properly on the laptop, most icons are working on my start menu.


Was originally a Windows 8.1 installation upgraded to Win10 about 6 months ago.
I have no idea what has caused this, no new hardware or software. No changes of anything. My laptop always runs problem free!
I did however notice and only saw this once, a system restore point from 6am in the morning, seems to of been created by a windows update while I was asleep, but after I saw that and tried to restore I have never seen it again, but looking on windows updates there was no new update that day








Tried setting up a new user but the issue exists in the new account also. I have also done virus checks and disk checks, restarted explorer.exe. No luck in safe mode either. Reinstalled graphic card drivres
Tried lots of delete and rebuild icon cache suggestions. Used windows defender to scan and Malwarebytes


Ran Dism commands
Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /ScanHealth
Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /CheckHealth
Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth


Ran sfc /scannow


Ran CHKDSK
The only thing that mentioned an error was in CHKDSK, which said
Usn Journal verificataion complete
The master file tables *MFT( BITMAP attribute is incorrect.
The Volume bitmap is incorrect
Windows has checked the file system and found problems
Please run chkdsk /scan to find the problems and queue them for repair
...
0kb in Bad sectors


I ran chkdsk /scan but nothing found and this error only appeared once on a chkdsk scan




I am overseas for an extended period of time and really do not want to do a clean install as I do not have all my software with me


Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks

Hi Simeven,

...and really do not want to do a clean install as I do not have all my software with me

From reading through your system issues, (IE: "Catastophic falure" messages, etc..) doing a clean install really might be the best way to go.

With that said, have you tried doing a Repair Install / in place install? I did note that you were overseas, but you should still be able to accomplish this without too much of a problem.

In essence, you would effectively re-intall Windows over itself from an ISO that you download, thus leaving <most> of your stuff as it is. I have never personally done one on Win-10, so I really can't offer much more then the below link. I have done several back in the XP days, and it often fixed the problem.

Good luck,
b1rd

How to Do a Repair Install of Windows 10 with an In-place Upgrade
(There's a nice video tutorial by essenbe with the link)