Icon corruption, 52 minute boot time, taskbar issues. I'm a mess.

This same info is posted on Microsoft's own forums, but I imagine they are slammed with questions. If you wanna see that thread, it's here

Ultimately, I was having these problems with my laptop but were solved when I fully formatted and reinstalled fresh from the mfg default. That said, my desktop seems to have contracted similar issues in the past week:

• Intermittently, I'm unable to click the Start Menu button or the Notification icon in the taskbar.
• Despite having the taskbar set to autohide, it remains on the screen, even when no icon is calling attention and the cursor has been clicked elsewhere.
• The Microsoft Store icon in the taskbar is corrupted.
  Unpinning and repinning to the taskbar has no effect.
• Generally speaking, Windows performance seems to be great, however, boot times are upwards of 30+ minutes of black screen before prompting for my pin. Checking the event viewer to confirm/diagnose boot time results in no matching Event IDs (100), so I'm unable to determine what might be causing the extreme delay.
  
  A quick look using net statistics workstation and systeminfo reveals a 52 minute boot time. That's plain unacceptable.

I've tried multiple times to use sfc and dism to solve these issues, based on other forum post suggestions, but I get messages telling me that files could not be repaired, or that a repair is pending and another restart is required (which also does not solve any problems). Reformatting this machine is something I want to avoid at all costs. I'm happy to output any diagnostic screens, screenshots, or logs if it will help in resolving these issues.
For example, here is the latest sfc scannow result output from the CBS.log: sfc /scannow log

Hi,


This sounds very much like a possible HDD corruption issue, so let's rule this out first.


1. Right click the start button, and choose Disk Management.
2. In the disk management window, look for a partition on disk 0 that has no drive letter. (If dual booting from an earlier version of windows, you may not find this, and you can skip to step 4!)
3. Right click the disk partition on disk 0 that has no drive letter, and choose "Change drive letter and path" to assign it a drive letter.
4. If you're dual booting with any earlier versions of Windows, make note of the drive letters where those versions are installed.
5. Right click the Start button,and choose Command Prompt (admin) then allow it through UAC
6. In Command prompt type "chkdsk c: /r" then press Enter
7. Press Y and Enter when prompted to check the disk at reboot.
8. Follow steps 6 and 7 for the partition you added a drive letter to, and/or any partitions, or drives with other versions of Windows installed.
9. Restart your computer (NOTE: the /R switch adds a surface check to chkdsk with 2 extra stages. These extra stages can take a significant amount of time, depending on size of the disk, and any damage it finds.)
10. Once you're back in Windows, run the same chkdsk /r command on all other internal, and external hard drives.


Hopefully, this will correct your error, and you will be able to repair your installation using DISM, and SFC.
Please reply with the results, and we will go from there. :)

I'm a bit hesitant here. Disk 0 actually has 3 partitions (see screenshot). The RECOVERY partition is one in place from Dell for going back to a default system state, but there's a second unassigned partition.

Normally, I'm pretty savvy about these things, but I don't wanna bork up the "last resort" options by adding or removing drive letters. Thoughts?

The one you want to add the drive letter to here is the one marked as Active, which is partition 1, labeled as RECOVERY. The active partition is actually the partition that the computer is booting from. Adding a drive letter to this partition will not hurt anything at all.

As for partition 0, most likely, Windows won't allow you to manipulate that using Microsoft's Disk Management anyway, because it is the OEM partition, but if it will allow it, I would go ahead and add one to it too, then run chkdsk on it as well.

Adding drive letters can't hurt anything on either of those partitions. Once you've checked them with chkdsk, go back into Disk Management, and remove the drive letters from those two partitions. That will prevent you (or any other app) from accidentally writing files to, or deleting from either of those partitions.

Alrighty, I added the drive letter and started the process. SFC came back with the "Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files but was unable to fix.

I ran several flavors of Dism following that. The last of which, Dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth , popped back with Error: 0x800f081f; source files could not be found Use "source" . . .

I ran sfc /scannow once more and got the same as before.

Did you run chkdsk /r on all of the drives, and partitions? Did it show any hard drive errors in event viewer? Another stupid question... is that computer connected to the internet?

in order for dism to work properly without a source being specified, the computer has to be connected to the internet, and be able to reach the windows update servers.

Also, if you used the ISO download to upgrade/install Windows 10 on your PC, you can insert that, or mount the ISO image, and use it as the source.

in an elevated command prompt, try the command "Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth /Source:wim:X:\sources\install.wim:1 /limitaccess" without the quotes, where X is the drive letter of your windows 10 install DVD, or mounted ISO image.

If this is an upgrade from an earlier version of Windows, you might try running DISM from a clean boot environment.

1. Right click the taskbar, and choose Task Manager
2. At the bottom of Task manager, click on "More Details" to show the full task manager
3. Click on the Startup tab of task manager, and disable everything, then close task manager
4. Use the Win+R key combination to bring up the run dialog, and run msconfig.exe
5. In the System Configuration Dialog's services tab, place a check in the box to hide all microsoft services
6. Click "Disable all" then click ok, and restart your computer.

To undo the clean boot, just reverse the above instructions, choosing the items that you want to start on boot from each of the two lists.

If this fails, you could try an in-place re-install using the windows 10 media creation tool (or the DVD) choosing to install, and keep your apps, and files.

Sorry for the late response.

chksdsk has been run on all my disks, sfc and dism run again, and despite several Windows Updates since the last time I was in here, my issues persist. I would even contend that they've gotten just a slight bit worse in that the store icon has gone from odd looking to a solid white block. It functions fine, but it's clearly not right. Frankly, I can live with that being fubarred, but its the immensely long reboot times that have me pulling out my hair.

A few questions...

What version of Windows was this computer designed for? It should say on the front of the case.
If it's a custom built machine, how old is the motherboard?
Is the current Windows 10 installation an upgrade from a previous version of Windows? If so, what version?
If this was an upgrade install, were there any similar problems with the previous version of Windows?

If you have your files backed up, and don't mind reinstalling any existing apps, my best suggestion is to download the Windows 10 ISO that matches your version of windows (Home/Pro, 32-bit/64-bit), burn the DVD, and do a completely fresh install by booting from that DVD.

NOTE: For windows 10 upgrades, you do not need a product key to reinstall Windows 10 from DVD onto the same machine, and you can safely choose "Skip this" for both product key prompts. Windows 10 will properly activate once it's connected to the internet. For this option, make sure you choose custom install.

The system is a Dell build that came with Windows 7 Pro. Windows 10 is the upgrade, again, from Window 7 Pro. No, I did not have similar problems. Boot time was only a minute or two at most from post to login.

I'm trying to avoid a system wipe. True, I have all my files backed up in case of disaster, but it would be death to my productivity (I'm a freelance designer) for longer than I'd like, so it's a very last ditch solution.

Another option is to revert back to your previous operating system, shrink your Windows 7 partition, and create another one to dual boot 10 with, doing a fresh install of windows 10 that way. That way you can use windows 10, and still have the stable windows 7.

I did this on mine. The 10 partition doesn't need to be that large either... 100GB would be more than enough, and above information still applies.

This prevents a full wipe, but still allows for a fresh install of windows 10.