odd win 10 laptop behaviour - fixed by avast restart

JohnB47

OK - long story, fixed when I decided to run a full virus check using Avast, which is my default virus checker. I just wondered if anyone had any ideas why this happened.

The story:

Today I couldn't compose a Hotmail email. Clicking on 'new' just opened a blank window. After a while I decided to shut down the PC - it had been on for months, just put in standby every day.

When I restarted it, I noticed that the taskbar looked a bit empty and the cursor showed a spinning wheel when placed in that area.

The taskbar just shows the windows icon at the very left and a few of the normal icons at the right - the arrow icon for shutting down a connected USB stick etc. The windows explorer icon was missing.

If I did ctrl, alt del, I can switch between users (my missus and I) and I can also shut down. I can also launch chrome (hence this post). However, everything seemed odd and that spinning wheel persisted in the taskbar.

So then I tried running a full scan using Avast. That's when I got the message to restart. So I did and all is now well.

So whats all this about? The PC seemed to be locked in a state wanting me to restart but not able to give me that message. I found out what was needed by mistake. Thank goodness I wasn't driving a driver-less car.

Happy for any advice.

PS. Hotmail is working fine now!

wongataa

Sounds like you had a glitch or slow startup for some reason. It happens sometimes. Not being turned of for months may have had something to do with it. You still could shut down as you found out from the Ctrl Alt Del menu. I would have done that and then pressed the power button when it turned off.

JohnB47

wongataa wrote: »

You still could shut down as you found out from the Ctrl Alt Del menu. I would have done that and then pressed the power button when it turned off.

Yes, that's exactly what I did. Curious though that Avast didn't seem to accept this action and wanted me to restart when it said so.

Cheers.