I have Windows 10, and sometimes, my task bar gets frozen and will not respond to any mouse actions, e.g. clicking, hovering, dragging. Nor will the windows key on my keyboard open the start menu. I can't open the start menu, i can't activate cortana, and can't select any short cuts that are pinned to the taskbar. The only way I can change applications is by pressing alt-tab.
Sometimes when my task bar gets frozen like i described, several of the icons on it will disappear, but the rest of the icons stay in the same position.
I do not know what causes this problem to happen, but the only way that I've found to temporarily fix it is to press the power button to make my laptop go to sleep, wake it up from sleep, then click the power button and restart the computer.
I'd like to know the cause of this problem so that I could perhaps fix it. or if it's a problem with windows 10, i'd like to know an easy way to restart the task bar. I used Ctrl-shift-esc and looked for windows explorer when this happened, and windows explorer was not listed anywhere in windows processes.