Why can't I click on my Start Menu (sometimes)?

dalchina said:

Hi, am puzzled you can't find the chkdsk results - did it actually run, I wonder? I frequently post that same instruction and people have succeeded with it.

Otherwise you could do that booting to a command prompt, making sure you are accessing the correct drive. (Drive letters will probably be different).

It's actually good the problem is consistent with both start menus to a degree in some way- more a generic problem of interaction with Windows.

Your comment on (wired) mouse vs touchpad will be helpful.

Is the "source" the same for the chkdsk in Win 10 as it was in the instructions? Perhaps it has changed?

I'm not honestly sure if the chkdsk ran. I just rebooted the computer then put on the TV for a while, knowing that the reboot and chkdsk would take a while. When my show was over, the computer was back at the desktop so I just assumed chkdsk had run. But perhaps it never ran at all. I suppose I should run it from the command prompt (again) and watch what happens, although that adds considerably to the time I can't use the computer (or do much of anything else since I will have to keep an eye on it).

I *do* occasionally see Disk Usage at 99% in Task Manager; this happened once yesterday for example. And I do get "not responding" on various apps fairly regularly, including Firefox and Thunderbird. I don't normally run Task Manager unless things are particularly sluggish.

I do wish Microsoft would get its act together and start writing better code. Windows has only had 3 good releases that I can recall: WIn98SE, WinXP, and Win7. Everything else has been just this side of complete rubbish.

dalchina said:

You don't have to watch chkdsk all the time. You should see it start running after the restart. Once you know it's running you can get back to the DIY or TV etc. Those instructions have been used by others recently. If you can't follow them, try searching yourself for how to get results from chkdsk after a restart, which is what did. You may find something better- if so, I'll use that in the future.


- this may be related to your lack of responsiveness if it's simultaneous, and is not normal.

Leave task man running and try to capture the screen when you notice sluggishness. (Prt Sc key is quickest -> clipboard, then to Paint e.g.).

My Win 10 has been very stable for me- and I have a LOT installed- since last March or so when I bought this laptop. And I do have some UI adaptations too. Win 7 had problems in its early days, I heard. I've used everything from 98 on. Win 2k was fine too. Even Vista worked for me! But MS has caused plenty of problems for a significant number of users, and unstable updates esp. related to the anniversary upgrade were widely reported.

Once again, sorry for the delay. My day did not go the way I thought it would but I did get some of the research done before I got to bed.

Since we weren't sure if the chkdsk had actually run, I ran it again, just to be sure. In fact, I tried it the first of the ways listed in the tutorial - where you expand "Manage" and then see your disk status - and it said my disk was just fine. The tutorial implied that I could run chkdsk there, even if the status was fine, but I couldn't figure out how to do it so I went on the second method and set it to run on the next reboot from Properties/Tools and then rebooted. This time, I kept an eye on it and I'm 100% certain it did run. I also found it in Event Viewer! I'm not sure exactly what output it should write any more - I haven't run a chkdsk in years - so here is the output I got:

Checking file system on C:
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Volume label is OS.


A disk check has been scheduled.
Windows will now check the disk.

Stage 1: Examining basic file system structure ...
Cleaning up instance tags for file 0x1163c.
809984 file records processed. File verification completed.
24142 large file records processed. 0 bad file records processed.
Stage 2: Examining file name linkage ...
965826 index entries processed. Index verification completed.
0 unindexed files scanned. 0 unindexed files recovered to lost and found.
Stage 3: Examining security descriptors ...
Cleaning up 2922 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 2922 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 2922 unused security descriptors.
Security descriptor verification completed.
77922 data files processed. CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...
Usn Journal verification completed.
CHKDSK discovered free space marked as allocated in the volume bitmap.

Windows has made corrections to the file system.
No further action is required.

500710399 KB total disk space.
378661112 KB in 630706 files.
421316 KB in 77923 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
901131 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
120726840 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
125177599 total allocation units on disk.
30181710 allocation units available on disk.

Internal Info:
00 5c 0c 00 7d cf 0a 00 a4 50 14 00 00 00 00 00 .\..}....P......
1d 0e 00 00 9a 7c 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 .....|..........

Windows has finished checking your disk.
Please wait while your computer restarts.

It doesn't look too worrisome at first glance but maybe some of those informational messages are more concerning if you have used this command before.

I also restarted Windows in Safe Mode. I hadn't done that in years so I was glad to find the tutorial for that because the technique had changed dramatically. I didn't do much in Safe Mode but I was able to bring up the Win 10 Start Menu and click on tiles so that part was certainly working. Is there anything else I should try when I get some more time this afternoon?

After booting back up in normal mode, I noticed the laptop was sluggish and went into Task Manager and found the Disk Activity maxed out. Here's a screen cap:



That's *really* tiny in the browser so I hope that is just a thumbnail and that you can see it at its proper size. If not, let me know how to get you a properly-sized image. For what it's worth, the entries are sorted from highest disk user down and the top entry is Avast at 1.5MB/s, although Skype had a much higher number a few seconds earlier as I tried to grab the picture.

I'm going to try to get my hands on a mouse again today. Is there anything specific you want me to do aside from just seeing if it opens the Start Menu?