Entire task bar is locked and I have a C++ error

[stephf]

Morning. Today about 4:00am I received a Windows update that gave no warning just began and then restarted my computer since the install and reboot this morning I can see everything in the task bar but none of it is clickable it does not work. I have hard crashed it since I cannot use the start button 3 times but this has not helped. The time, calendar and all icons do not respond to left or right clicks. Everything on my desktop seems normal as I continue to test.

Also, since I installed Win10 last Sunday I see a C++ error that tells me to contact the program administrator. It pops up whenever I charge the system or unplug after charge and at other random times.
Runtime Error!
Program: C:\\WINDOWS\system32\atibtmon.exe

The application has requested the Runtime to terminate it in an unusual way.
Please contact the application's support team for more information.

Please, help. This is driving me crazy!
Thank you,
Stephanie

 

[Trouble]

Runtime Error!
Program: C:\\WINDOWS\system32\atibtmon.exe

That is I believe, the Brightness Monitor for your ATI / AMD video card and has been reported to produce that error across the web. They may have an update for it by now, but I can't say for certain. Back a month or so ago, people were actually renaming it to atibtmon.BAK to break it and prevent it from loading.
It is probably not related to your other issues, but you can check for an update, ignore it or rename it and see if that still works.
As to your other issues.....
Does your keyboard work, can you hit Ctrl + Alt + Delete and if so does it produce an option to launch Task Manger?

 

[stephf]

Thank you for the error information.
Yes, I can produce the task manager and several hours after I posted this message the majority of the task bar became active again, all accept for the start button which still does nothing...

 

[Trouble]

Well I don't know quite where to go from here.
I just read another post where the member with similar issues, left her computer run overnight and when you went back to it the next day, everything was OK.
Maybe waiting a bit longer might be a reasonable approach, although I have no idea why or what's happening.
I was going to recommend booting into Safe Mode and letting it set in safe mode for 10 minutes or so and then rebooting normally, to see if that would shake anything loose.
If you want to try, just hit Ctrl + Alt + Delete and use the power button in the bottom right corner to restart your computer by holding the Shift Key down while you click Restart.
That should take you to these screens
https://www.windows10forums.com/articles/safe-mode.3/
choose #4 or #5 when you arrive at the appropriate screen.

 

[stephf]

I am going to go with # 1. Long day today. I will just leave it on and I'm going to bed.
more messing tomorrow I'm sure.
Thank you so much I will post how things are in the morning.

 

[Trouble]

I will post how things are in the morning.

Please do. I for one, am very interested in whether or not this thing automagically fixes itself.

 

[stephf]

Ok, I'm sorry. I waited all weekend. First reboot I lost all the icons in my task bar, the start button would toggle to blue when I hovered over it, but it still did not respond.
2nd crash and reboot brought me the task bar icons back but nothing works. They are all just pretty to look at. I have no ability to shut down or access these programs. Dont know what to do.
Up and down all weekend. Disgusted. Each time produces slightly different results but nothing works. Running through an entire battery charge in about 25 minutes. Last week I was good for a couple hours.
Any ideas or suggestions would be helpful before I throw it out on the front lawn.

 

[Trouble]

And you tried Ctrl + Alt + Delete all simultaneously (hold ctrl and alt and strike the delete key) and that produces nothing?

 

[stephf]

Oh yea... over and over. it gives me a white box that (is not responding) and then I have to crash it. I spent most of yesterday on the phone with tech support in the Phillapines and Canada... they keep eventually hanging up on me, but I am a persistent soul. So I call them back and start over. I am about ready to go back to Win 7
Don't know what else to do. If only I could access settings on my own I would have already followed the directions to revert.
The task bar is locked. frozen solid. and it isnt budging.

 

[Trouble]

It may be possible for you to perform an in-place upgrade / repair.
If you have the installation media, if not, then
The installation media can be obtained through either of these two resources.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/techbench
OR
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

Once you have the ISO, you can use ImgBurn to burn it to a DVD or Rufus to burn it to a USB ThumbDrive
Or simply double click the ISO from within Windows 10, which will mount it and produce a virtual drive. Then you simply run setup,exe from it
There is a pretty good article here https://neosmart.net/wiki/windows-10-repair-installation/ just ignore the first couple paragraphs where they are promoting their repair products and scroll down to the meat of the article.