Something very strange started happening with my computer today. Here's a list of symptoms: I started my laptop (Windows 11) from sleep state, and there was a dialogue open from Norton on the screen. I don't remember exactly what it said, but the gist of it was it was asking to scan my newly inserted USB device, only the "USB device" showed as my internal 2TB HDD hard drive. I have a 500gb SSD and the 2TB HDD. Windows is installed on my SSD. I clicked cancel on the dialogue. I noticed immediately that all the programs I had previously pinned to my taskbar were no longer pinned. The default taskbar items and the Start menu showed up as normal. Most programs I had "Pinned to Start" were still there, but showed this blank white page icon: The shortcuts all opened as normal. The only way to fix this was to unpin them all from start, and manually re-pin them. The icons showed up as normal. Windows is now unable to "find" many of my files, specifically, text files. Most of my text files had this Notepad icon: but now they all have this generic .txt file icon: Notepad is still the default program to open text files. When I click on any text file, I get the following error: If I try to open any picture with the default Windows "Photo" app, I get the following error: Here is the troubleshooting I have already tried: I restarted my computer. This did nothing. I updated Windows and my drivers. This did nothing. I ran DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Scanhealth (No component store corruption detected), DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /checkhealth and finally DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth in the elevated command prompt. This did nothing. I ran a system restore that was 2 days ago. My taskbar icons showed back up (yay) but no other issues were fixed. Can someone please help? Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question. Anonymous 2024-06-02T12:26:06+00:00 Hi, good day! I'm Jerico T., I understand that you're having some issues right now, I'll do my best to help you with your concern. Have you tried running a full scan on your windows computer to check? Kindly try and boot your computer into Safemode Kindly boot your computer into Safemode. Safemode is a windows environment where non-Microsoft services are disabled, and only selected Microsoft services are running to start windows properly. Click on the link below and follow the steps https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/sta... Once booted in safemode, kindly try and run a full anti-malware scan on your computer to remove any threats. Restart the computer and check if the same issue appears If the issue persists, kindly try and create a new user profile on your windows to isolate the issue if it only occurs on the current user profile or if it appears on any user profile on your computer. Create a new user profile We will try to create new user profile to check if the issue happens on all windows users on your computer or just isolated on the current profile that you're using. Open the command prompt with elevated access (Administrator Access) Type the below command and hit enter every after command. net user "account name" /add (change the "account name" to any name that you preferred) net localgroup administrators "account name" /add (change the "account name" with the name that you put in the first command) Close the command prompt and switch to the new user. Check if the same issue occurs on the new user profile. Feel free to reach back if you need any further assistance. Hope this help. Have a good day. Thank you, Jerico T. 0 comments No comments Hi, good day! I'm Jerico T., I understand that you're having some issues right now, I'll do my best to help you with your concern. Have you tried running a full scan on your windows computer to check? Kindly try and boot your computer into Safemode Kindly boot your computer into Safemode. Safemode is a windows environment where non-Microsoft services are disabled, and only selected Microsoft services are running to start windows properly.

Click on the link below and follow the steps https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/sta... Once booted in safemode, kindly try and run a full anti-malware scan on your computer to remove any threats. Restart the computer and check if the same issue appears If the issue persists, kindly try and create a new user profile on your windows to isolate the issue if it only occurs on the current user profile or if it appears on any user profile on your computer. Create a new user profile We will try to create new user profile to check if the issue happens on all windows users on your computer or just isolated on the current profile that you're using. Open the command prompt with elevated access (Administrator Access) Type the below command and hit enter every after command. net user "account name" /add (change the "account name" to any name that you preferred) net localgroup administrators "account name" /add (change the "account name" with the name that you put in the first command) Close the command prompt and switch to the new user. Check if the same issue occurs on the new user profile. Feel free to reach back if you need any further assistance. Hope this help. Have a good day.