The taskbar is one of the most important and prevalent features on your Windows 10 desktop. You may refer to it as the “Start bar,” which is technically a mistake. But don’t worry, we understand.
When the taskbar stops working, it seriously inhibits your Windows 10 experience and can feel awfully restrictive. So we’ve sought out a bunch of fixes for a faulty taskbar to help you out.
1. Make a Registry Tweak
This fix involves making a small change to to a registry key in the “WpnUserService” folder.
To do this, open the Registry Editor. (You can just type regedit in the Start menu or press Win + R.)
Click the search bar at the top of the registry editor window, and enter the following path:
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\WpnUserService
From here, in the pane on the right, double-click the “Start” DWORD, change the value to “4,” then click OK.
Reboot your PC, and see if your taskbar is back to normal.
2. Move Everything to a New Account
Another popular – though more radical – solution here is to create a new administrator account, and if everything works okay with that, move all the bits and pieces from your personal directories over to that.
First, put all your personal files from the faulty account in a safe place where they won’t get deleted. (External hard drive’s always good.) Once you’ve done that, delete the problematic account, and create a new one using the same details.
To create a new admin account, Press Win + I -> Accounts -> Family & other people -> Add someone else to this PC. Follow the instructions to create an account.
Once you’ve created the account, under the “Family & other people” heading, click that account and click “Change account type,” then “Administrator” in the drop-down.
Log into this account, move all your personal files over from your safe place, and enjoy!
3. Disable Third-Party Services
This one takes a little while to complete, but it will help you find out whether a third-party app could actually be the thing giving you trouble. Press Win + R, then type msconfig into the Run box.
Next, click the Services tab, disable several non-Microsoft services using the checkboxes, then reboot your PC. Is the taskbar working now? If not, then go back to the msconfig window (and Services tab), re-enable the services you disabled, and disable another several non-Microsoft services, reboot your PC, and check your taskbar again.
Keep repeating this procedure until hopefully your taskbar starts working again. Once it does, re-enable each service one by one until it stops working again. At that point you’ve found the culprit services! Disable it again, and you’re good to go.
4. Re-register Apps in Powershell
Many Microsoft apps are hard-baked into the OS and can have all kinds of weird and unexpected effects on the rest of Windows 10. One undesirable side. effect can be faulty desktop components, like the Taskbar.
To fix this, click the Start button, type powershell, then right-click it in the search results and click “Run as administrator”,
Next, enter the following command and hit Enter:
.Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml"}
Once the process is complete, reboot your PC, and hopefully, your Taskbar will be back in action.
Conclusion
There are plenty of reasons for a Windows taskbar not working, and the solutions aren’t always that obvious. If the above don’t work for you, and you manage to find an alternative solution
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