Hello!
I booted up my PC last night and my taskbar wasn’t working correctly. Icons weren’t showing up, tiles weren’t showing up, search, start, none of it working.
After continuously searching for a fix and trying various solutions, I came across one saying to boot into safe mode and uninstall Avast. So, I did as such, and it worked. A few other people were also saying this worked.
I’m not sure what it is, but it seems that Avast is causing an issue with Windows start, search, taskbar, etc.
You could also have tried booting into Safe Mode with Networking and then reboot to regular mode.
That probably would have solved the Windows 10 bug. 
Oh yes 
Strange that with Avira or Defender there’s no need to reboot and solve anything 
Maybe you need to do a bit more reading before jumping to conclusions.
The problem can happen even without any 3rd party AV installed.
I haven’t had this happen again since the last major Windows 10 update.
Yes, in 1511 it is probably fixed. But with Avast still modern apps runtime sometimes fails to start properly. The only diference is that there’s no pop-up about Cortana etc. Tested many times on CLEAN system.
Contact MS support when that happens for help.
No need to do that. All is running fine with Avira Free
Remember my reply the next time it happens.
Demagogy isn’t the right way how to defend your buggy product
The only false statement here is the one that blames one program instead of the correct one.
This is a Windows 10 problem.
Hmm… Many people aren’t sure about this for good reasons. Btw haven’t you said in another thread here that MS already fixed it in 1511 ?
That statement was from Microsoft and referred to the start menu and Cortna problem.
I personally haven’t had any further problems since the update.
My gut feeling is that Windows 10 updates don’t completely install on some computers with a result that the task bar buttons are indeed frozen. Both my wife (on her notebook) and I (on the desktop computer) have Avast Free – latest version installed. After Tuesday’s Windows update, my computer acted properly, hers resulted in the frozen tak bar icons.
We did a Ctl-Alt-Delete to get to the Task Manager on the notebook and then clicked on the power–>restart. The notebook did indeed restart AND completed the Windows update properly. After the completion, the task bar icons again worked properly.
So, I agree it isn’t an Avast issue or it would seem ALL computers are affected. In my experience, this is not the case. Just sloppy updating is the culprit.
Can relate to that. This Avast! problem is machine specific. While I don’t have any issues on some of my machines, others sometimes fail to load taskbar icons or load Windows apps (calc, Store, Cortana, etc.). Tried various fixes found on the Internet, but the permanent one was removing free Avast! from the system. No problems since.
As Bob (and others) have told, it is not a avast problem but a Windows one.