On restart, developed problems with search, start menu, and taskbar.

Alright, so, a few days ago I restarted my laptop, a couple weeks after upgrading to W10, and over the next hour i noticed three seemingly unrelated problems that all started at the same time.

I first noticed that two of my pinned taskbar icons are "blank". They show no icon in the box. It still highlights when i scroll over it, and i can still click them, but they won't actually open. One of them is microsoft edge and the other I can't recall what it is, but when i try to open either I get "This app won't open". I tried to remove them and just put back new icons, and I discovered i can't right click on them. Nothing comes up when I do. My other programs are fine on the taskbar, it's just two out of 10.

The second thing I noticed is that when I search via cortana, or navigate via the start menu, i cannot open programs. I can open programs via clicking a file that defaults to them, or by opening the program via desktop shortcut or the .exe, but i can't open from the start menu.

Finally, when I open internet explorer, it also has a blank icon, though it does work normally otherwise.

I don't know if there's some reason any or all of these would be related but the timing was all within an hour after a restart. I have restarted several times since and had no new programs installed or anything like that shortly before the problem occured.

Any ideas?

If icons disappear, you might have to clear your icon cache. Try this.

That did seem to fix the problem with IE, but not the missing taskbar icons and I still have the other problems.

Anyone have any ideas about the main problems?

I can't find any advice with a google search, I'm not sure what to try.