Missing Taskbar Icons

I would suggest a run of the System File Checker tool since you have a Windows related problem there for sure! With Edge coming already pinned to the Start and task bar alike and having unpined Edge I just repinned it quickly here without any issue. You may have either a system file in need of replacement or a registry glitch of some type.

First to rule out or confirm a system file is missing or not if not corrupted in some way possibly from a bad or impartial upgrade to 10 you will want to right click on the Start button itself and scroll down to either of the command prompt options the "Command(Admin)" being the preferred and once opened up type in "sfc /scannow" to see the scan with the system tool find anything needing to be replaced.

Another possible but uncertain fix would be found in the guide to take all of the Taskbar Pinned Apps- Reset and Clear in Windows 10 in order to try repinning each one to see if the bug is in the system registry itself since once everything is reset you should be able to pin them fresh since the original likely tainted contents in the registry will be removed as far as some possible goofed up entries there. Since pinning and unpinning is mainly controlled by way of the system registry the idea is to see the registry itself get refreshed by new entries once the original are tossed! Hopefully this can resolve the icon issue between that and the SFC tool checking for anything else missed.

If you right click on the task bar itself does the properties screen appear? When bringing that up the option to Always combine taskbar buttons as well as Combine when taskbar is full and Never combine are three options. If somehow that got changed to the Never combine setting that would explain the appearance of the second button.



The sight of a line rather icon however suggests something goofed in the system registry. If you had a good restore point made for this was first seen you could roll everything a day or week even before it was first seen. Also take notes on everything other then 10 updates that went on just before seeing this in case a 3rd party app is the culprit.

Here I use Waterfox here which was the 64bit flavor derived by a source completely independent from Mozilla and the 32bit platform seen with FF. I never run into any of those issues but ever since the upgrade to 10 I find that when clicking on a link instead of seeing any new window or tab open up I end up moving off the page where I was! I have to right click on each link now instead still using the latest as well as rolling back to older versions as well as being seen with IE.

As for the missing icons problem the one time I saw that was with the initial upgrade on the laptop where the Start button was invisible as well as the Settings screen being totally blank and no access to the AllApps! But being the 3rd upgrade I knew that the upgrade was immediately being replaced by a fresh clean install anyways and simply nuke the upgrade once I found it activated.

That tells me your problem there is also from a buggy install of 10 and without any option to roll back the reg or not knowing the registry values required you may end up needing to also see that next clean install take place unless opting for the upgrade to repair type install. Here I would have simply called it a day already and simply nuked the buggy copy of 10 to slap on a clean install by now! This is also why I have a pair of 2tb storage drives since that allows me to nuke the OS drive at any time without worry!

Here the MS store and Edge items were simply unpinned from the task bar once I had the first look at Edge and knew that wasn't ready yet! I simply went into the IE folder and pinned the 64bit flavor of that on the task bar instead to have the second browser option. "C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplorer.exe" is what to right click on and see pinned in the Start as well the task bar! The 32bit form is found in the Program Files(x86)\Internet Explorer there instead.

For you however it will come down to deciding on whether or not to see the upgrade to 10 replaced by the clean install. At the moment you may only be seeing this one problem only but running with a bugged up registry is bound to see other problem emerge sooner or later!

Hello noten Welcome to the Ten Forums!

The items you see the Manage Apps and Features wouldn't be seen on the main Taskbar to begin with. There's a "+" Plus button in there to add new apps you can use to put back whenever got knocked out. That's how you go about adding anything new into that area.
For anyone signed up for the Windows Insider Program you would look in there to see if the "Insider hub" is present to continue receiving the newer builds through the updates.

Night Hawk said:

The items you see the Manage Apps and Features wouldn't be seen on the main Taskbar to begin with.

Thanks, but I think you miss my point: Metro icons are invisible BOTH in taskbar AND in other situations where they are presented as anything other than tiles, like in the Manage Apps and Features window.

My question is: how do I get Metro App icons (I don't even know if that's what they're called anymore) to show up at all? They don't show on the taskbar, they don't show on the desktop, they don't show on any list that should be displaying them.

Peent.