What happened to my laptop?
I have a Lenovo that I rarely use. I used it last week for a Zoom meeting with Habitat. It has video capability that my desk top doesn’t have. I had another meeting last Monday. The laptop was still on the table where I had left it.
I turned it on and got a message that my battery was low, which was odd because I’d had it plugged it. I checked, and it was unplugged.
I plugged it back in and the home screen was completely unrecognizable. Instead of my tool bars, or my desktop icons for Fluther and Facebook, etc. I had all these giant squares of some random programs like pictures and paint, ect.
I had to do a search for Firefox, and found it, but it wouldn’t open up.
I did a restore, but I wasn’t able to find where I could specify a date. It just defaulted to that day. I went ahead and ran the restore and it didn’t change anything.
I did a search for Classic Shell. System said I had it on my computer so I ran that too.
Still nothing changed.
Running Windows 10.
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13 Answers
I’m sorry for your mystification and frustration.
Did the thing update when you weren’t looking, and while running on battery?—install a whole new version, with a new GUI with giant pictures for selected apps? If you hadn’t used it for a while, it was probably behind in releases and got word from its master (not you, of course) to start downloading and installing updates since the last time you had it on. I hate it when that happens.
One way or another, computers are going to be the death of us.
Why can’t I choose my own restore date?
I hope somebody can help you with this.
Computers should come with hammers so you can smash them into little pieces if you’ve a mind to, like I do…A LOT!
@kritiper The same should come with android phones. I have been tempted to spike mine more than once.
Sounds to me like Windows 10 showing you its “ridiculous squares of Microsoft-selected stupid programs you probably don’t want” UI.
It’s a worse example of that “people are stupid and don’t know what they want – But phone UI is great! Let’s fill their screen with colored squares of the nonsense we want to show them.” design philosophy mentioned in my phone rant question/answers today… combined with “We’re Microsoft and it’s our Freedom To Innovate, and we think we can get away with it”.
I avoid having Windows 10 machines which Windows 10 fans will tell you is SO not the Windows 8 version of the same thing, so I’m not sure what keys or clicks you can use to get back to the sane desktop UI. But that is my best guess what it is.
Let’s “ask Google”: “how the f@&# do I escape windows 10 stupid programs colored squares mode?”
Here, try this article, titled Tablet Mode, or What the heck happened to my Desktop?!
@Zaku….thanks That’s closing in on it for sure. But I can’t find “Tablet mode” or
Anyway, I tweaked some stuff and restarted it…..30 minutes ago. It’s still trying to restart.
The long restart time might just be Windows doing its update parade, which Windows 10 will do whether you like it or not, and it considers start-up to be a great time to try to catch up. When you ignore a Windows 8 – 10 computer for months, that can mean up to an hour or more of constant updates making “your” computer unusable for that time. It may also show you error messages about the update process, which hopefully can be eventually solved by more long sacrifices of time/electricity/bandwidth to the MS Update gods.
@Zaku Indeed. That has happened to me more than once.
@kritiper @Nomore_lockout Mhmm, but that means you can choose your own ideal hammer or axe, or other tool of destruction to use.
I used to help a fellow in my apartment building with his computer, but he seemed to really be hoping I would tell him he should throw it off his balcony, and/or shoot it.
@Zaku It’s true. What matters is the end result.
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