Control Panel freezes since anniversary update - Lenovo Thinkpad

docGlenn · 08 Oct 2016

Lenovo Thinkpad W550s, originally Windows 7 Pro, updated to Win 10 Pro more than a year ago. Since Anniversary update was applied (only a week ago), I see that Control Panel is now inoperative. It is possible that this problem occurred before Anniversary, but I know I used CP around 4 weeks earlier.

How and What: in search bar, type "control panel". It opens and then I get the green "progress bar" at the top as it apparently searches for additional control modules. It never stops searching. And now if I click on any item in the panel, it hangs up with spinning wheel. And then I cannot bring up Task Manager by right-click on the Date-time at lower right. I can still interact with the already open web browser. Attempting to access anything else in CP tells me it is "not responding".

How to Kill Control Panel: after some time if I right click on the CP is the taskbar, I will not see a context menu. However, suddenly the entire task bar blanks out and then re-writes itself - and the CP icon is gone.

What else: I can run the much less useful Windows 10 "settings" app. And in it I am able to access things such as Device Manager. So I'm not hosed, just very annoyed.
I suspect some Lenovo bug, but have absolutely no evidence for this - it's just that I'm pretty sour on Lenovo after buying this Thinkpad (but the keyboard and pointing stick are excellent!).

Has anybody else encountered trouble like this?

dalchina · 10 Oct 2016

Hi, no, not noted a report like this yet. My CP is fine, build 14393.222.

Could you post your build number? (Windows key + R, type winver).

If you create a new user account for test purposes, do you see the same thing?
And in Safe Mode?
Is there anything of help in the event log (Event Viewer) or Reliability History? (Type Relia in Cortana's search field, click the result)