Cannot open applications!

My friend is having a problem where when he powers on his HP Notebook 17-x101na laptop.
When he powers it on the start screen comes on but when he presses Enter to get to the log in screen nothing happens. He presses Ctrl+Alt+Del and then he gets the log in screen.
On the desktop none of the shortcuts work and neither does the Start Menu or the shortcuts on the Task Bar except for File Explorer.
I asked him to open File Explorer navigate to a Word document right click it and choose Open with and choose Word which he did and was able to do.
I am going over to try and help him tomorrow in the meantime can anyone help me to find out how to solve this issue. Thanks.

Thanks Brink, I shall try it tomorrow and post back.

Brink said:

Hello scopio,

If this is only happening with shortcuts (.lnk), then downloading and merging the .reg file for the listed lnk item in Option Two below may help. It will restore the default associations and registry entries for shortcuts that will hopefully fix it for your friend.

Restore Default File Type Associations in Windows 10 | Windows 10 Tutorials

I went to my friends house to see what the issue was with his HP Notebook 17-x101na.
The issue was not just with the shortcuts (.lnk) but a very strange problem!
When I first powered on the pc there was no HP splash screen but it loaded to the Start Screen which had the wrong date and time to the computer clock on the Taskbar! I was not able to get the log on screen, although he had no password set, by pressing Enter or any other key except Ctrl+Alt+Del which would log me on to the Desktop.
Once on the desktop no shortcut would work on the desktop only File Explorer would work on the taskbar. The Start button would not work normally only by right clicking it to get the menu but click on menu items would not work either, I could get to Task Manager but Task Manager Settings would not work either. Tried to connect a USB stick but that would give a sound but would not load it just went into a loop with sound! Run a CMD from Task Manager and did a sfc /scannow which did not find any errors, the tried rstrui.exe but it just kept trying to run without success.

I was able to press Window key + R and run msconfig to boot into save mode where everything was working normally and I then run System Restore and restored to a previous working restore point and then booting to Windows normally which eventually sorted whatever the issue was. But I am still intrigued as to what may have caused this strange issue.