My system is a Lenovo laptop with Windows 10; everything is up to date. I had something strange happen yesterday. I was testing video files when suddenly KMPlayer refused to work. Then out of the blue all but one of my taskbar icons disappeared. Restarted but no good. Luckily, I had just made a Macrium backup about an hour previously when everything was fine. So I restored the backup but it didn't correct the taskbar issue. I manually added my icons back to the taskbar and it seems okay now. Doesn't that seem odd? Anyone ever had this happen or know what might have caused it?
Whatever happened already happened before the hour previous. When I restore a backup I go back to the day before (or sometimes further back) as it's likely that whatever was broken happened during your current session. Also, by taskbar icons do you mean apps you pinned to the taskbar or the tray icons? Since you said you added them back I will assume the former but without being sure a guess would be more of a guess than knowing which thing and then guessing.
After some searching it looks like there are too many possibilities to list. This article looks the most promising for a reason why, but if you are good at this point I don't know if you want to mess with it further. Taskbar icons Missing or Disappeared in Windows 10 - Techbout
Yes, there could be a million possibilities. The way my question was worded may have made it seem like I'm open to speculation. What I'd really like to know is if this specific thing has happened to anyone else and if they know what caused it; especially why the restore didn't fix it. I've always had the impression that full system backups were pretty much foolproof. Never had a situation where it didn't correct whatever was wrong. Like you said, there is the possibility that whatever caused the problem was already there before I made the backup and only manifested later; but that seems very strange. I thought about going back to an earlier backup but the next one back was made before I installed a new program and I didn't want to have to reinstall it. If it gives me any more problems I may have to though.
That's likely all you're going to get as there are too many possibilities. If it were me I would check the icon cache first. It could have been corrupted in the filesystem before it would have been apparent in memory. Beyond that it is all speculation so I won't bother to suggest anything else as it is all guesses. This has never happened to me so I have nothing else to offer beyond that single guess.
