All applications but Microsoft Edge will only start as background tasks

Question

An application I wrote crashed, and because it was controlling a hidden Chrome window I went in to task manager and killed all the 'Chrome' tasks and a few with 'Background' in the task name that seemed relevant.

The computer still wasn't working properly so I reset it. Now whenever I start any software the computer thinks about it for a couple of seconds and then nothing. The application is shown in task manager as a 'Background Process' but I can't tab to it or interact with it.

The applications so far affected are:

• Chrome
• Visual Studio
• Adobe Photoshop
• Excel
• Firefox
• Notepad++

The applications I can open normally are:

• Calculator
• Snipping tool
• Camera

Microsoft Edge works, but barely. It won't launch secondary widows to deal with things like the 'Log in with Google' button on stackexchange.

I'm at a loss as to how else to describe the situation, but perhaps the attached task manager screenshot helps! https://i.stack.imgur.com/V136f.jpg

Answer 1

I have no explanation for the problem, but according to your description I can say that something is very wrong, so strong measures are required.

I would counsel the following measures, in ascending order of severity :

• Run chkdsk C:, report to us on errors (if any), and we'll decide together if to fix the errors with chkdsk /f C: or chkdsk /f /r /x C:. (chkdsk info)
• Run sfc /scannow.
• Do a System Restore to a date before the problem happened.
• Do Repair Install Windows 10 with an In-place Upgrade

Ensure before starting that you have very good backups.