Start and Charm Bar don't work sometime

Question

I am using window 8.1 pro 32bit. For a couple of weeks, I have encountered some problems with the Start button and Charm bar. Generally, when I put mouse on Start button, it turns black and then I can click it to open Start Menu. The same with Charm bar. When I put mouse to the top right of the screen, Charm bar appear. However, now I can't do that anymore. Start button won't turn black and does not respond to click. Charm bar also won't appear by mouse command either. I have to use keyboard command instead. I think after a restart, everything seems to become normal, but days later it is getting back to the same problem again.

Do you have any idea on that?

Solution

Starting and stopping the explorer fixed the problem for me.

For inexperienced users:

• Hold Ctrl+ALT+delete at the same time.
• Select "task manager." Choose the "Processes" tab at the top.
• find "windows explorer" in the list (near the end) and click it.

• Click the "restart" button in the bottom right side of box --- OR right click "Windows Explorer" and click "end task" (don't panic when you can no longer see your desktop or windows)

• Just hold Ctrl+alt+delete again, click task manager

• then click "file" at the top, select "run new task," then type explorer.exe

Your desktop will re-appear (possibly re-arranged and you may need to re-organize your icons the way you desire).

But after that, the programs should again be working properly and allowing the charms menu and other program menus to appear as they did before.

Comments

[Ramhound]

This a villania installation of Windows 8.1? Do you have ALL updates installed including Update 1? The Start Menu was replaced by the Start Screen do you mean that by chance?

[simon at rcl]

No. He means the start button on the desktop at the lower left which turns black when you mouse-over it and takes you to the start screen when you click it.

[TBBT]

Yes, but sometime it does not turn black and not respond to click. When this happens, I can only go to start screen by using keyboard command.

[DaveTheMinion]

Please consider changing the selected answer to the one that explains in detail how to access the task manager.

[Rsya Studios]

The above answer is restarting the process explorer.exe, not the computer.