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On my Windows 10 laptop (Lenovo Carbon (6th Gen)) when I launch the Task Manager, its window does not show up. My configuration is three screens: laptop's own screen plus two external USB monitors.

An icon does appear on the taskbar at the bottom of the screen. When I hover over this icon, I see a thumbnail of the Task Manager window (a tiny window, which looks similar to Task Manager appears above the taskbar), but when I click on the thumbnail, nothing happens.

Other symptoms: During several days (but no longer), when I rebooted the laptop, it complained that it could not close the Task Manager, but when I cancelled reboot, no Task Manager window was there.

Neither Alt+Tab nor Win+Tab show the Task Manager window (even though I can see its thumbnail in the taskbar, as described above). When I try to launch Google Chrome (even in Incognito mode), all the same symptoms happen: No window and yes, a thumbnail, which does not show a window, and no window in Alt+Tab nor in Win+Tab.

Where can I start looking to solve this issue? Yes, I've rebooted zillion times; shut down the laptop and turned on again.

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    Have you tried the standard remedy for out-of-screen windows (Alt+Space)? Though it’s unlikely to help, it won’t hurt to try.
    – Daniel B
    Commented Aug 12 at 18:02
  • @DanielB Shame on me! I didn't think of it: The window was on the laptop's own screen, whereas my main display is an external USB mnitor ( and my setup is such that I cannot see the laptop's screen). Then I activated the missing window by clicking on its thumbnail in the taskbar and moved it with repeated Win- arrow. (I didn't try Alt-space only because I don't know what it does). The above sold the problem: thumbnail, then Win-arrows.
    – Alexander Gelbukh
    Commented Aug 13 at 0:18

2 Answers 2

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  1. Try to use a higher-resolution display -- Task Manager might come into view. Then center the app before changing to lower rez.

  2. Use the keyboard to try to move app window into view, as @DanielB suggests.

  3. Try running Task Manager as another user. Either change user, or use a tool such as Sordum's PowerRun to reun as SYSTEM, for example. [Note that making a shortcut to taskmgr.exe and setting it to run as Administrator just runs it as current user.]

  4. Try SFC and DISM to repair Windows.

  5. Workaround: use Microsoft's Sysinternals Process Explorer, which has about all the functionality of Task Manager.

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See my comment above: the missing windows were on another display, since I hve a multi-display setup. The first place to check for missing things is the laptop's own display if there are additional USB monitors connected. It seems the system trats laptop's own display as in a way "more main / mainer" display than the monitor assigned to be the main display in the Settings. Probably it is because the built-in display gets initialized first -- before the USB monitors.

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