Windows 11 File Explorer address and menu bars invisible

Anonymous
2024-01-26T20:39:51+00:00

Suddenly on one of my Windows 11 Pro systems at home the address bar and menu bar became invisible. They were there and responded to mouse clicks and I could type in the address bar. But they are invisible. The problem existed whether signed in to the console session or an RDP session.

Also, in File Explorer and on the desktop when I right clicked, the menu window appeared but was blank. I could move the cursor through it and see a change and get submenus to open but of course they too were blank. I clicked on these menus and they responded with the appropriate response depending on where the cursor was when clicked.

I tried playing with themes, display properties, I've run SFC /scannow and DISM (with the restorehealth option). The first SFC found corruption and said it fixed it. Subsequent runs have found no problems. The last thing I did was do a Reset (keeping files). Nothing I've done has made any difference.

My account has admin rights on the system. I tried signing in with another account which also has admin rights and for this account the bars weren't invisible but simply not there. I then signed out of the other account and signed back in as myself. Much to my surprise the bars are now gone for me as well! This had not happened despite multiple reboots and all else that I had done. Only after signing in with the other account and then back in as myself. I rebooted but no change.

Any ideas how to fix this one system?

Jonathan

Windows for home | Windows 11 | Performance and system failures

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  1. Anonymous
    2024-01-26T22:14:50+00:00

    Hi Jonathan. My name is Chris and I am a Windows Independent Expert. I will be happy to try and sort you out today!

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  2. Anonymous
    2024-01-26T22:17:11+00:00

    First things first, close any open apps... Then right click on the taskbar somewhere in the open and click Task Manager... Make sure you are on the Processes tab, scroll down to Windows Explorer, right click on it and click End Process... After doing this, click the windows key and R to open the Run dialog and type explorer.exe and OK...

    Once everything reappears, open File Explorer and let me know how you made out!

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  3. Anonymous
    2024-01-26T22:49:14+00:00

    I did that more than once before I did anything else. Didn't make any difference. That's why I then tried rebooting and then moved on to the other troubleshooting steps.

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  4. Anonymous
    2024-01-26T22:51:45+00:00

    I see. After trying that and everything you posted in your initial question, I'm afraid your next step would be a reset or reinstall of the Operating System. You seem to have exhausted all troubleshooting steps that lead up to that. I can walk you through doing that if you like.

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  5. Anonymous
    2024-01-26T23:01:51+00:00

    Well, as stated earlier, a reset is the last troubleshooting step I did and that didn't fix the problem. I guess a 'nuke and pave' is all that's left to do.

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