Here's what my problem looks like:
I run into this bug occassionally and, inevitably, it's usually when I'm running a lot of processes and can't easily restart. I'd think a reset of explorer.exe would do the trick, but I can't even see which process is explorer.exe in Task Manager!
Opening a new window of command prompt is not working either (though processes running in one when this started seem to still work). When I open command prompt, it opens as a very tiny rectangle, and dragging it to a bigger resize shows a blank terminal with no cursor, no menu buttons even when pressing alt, nothing.
Any way to reset explorer.exe or address this bug? A restart generally fixes it but I'm trying to find a way around it when I have too much running to restart but also need to work on other tasks that require menu bars, terminal, etc.
2 Answers
Official way, without killing any tasks (if possible):
If the taskbar is still visible and responsive, then you can exit and restart Windows Explorer normally:
Hold down Ctrl+Shift when right-clicking to open standard taskbar menu. Area suitable for clicking is always available.
From the context menu, select Exit Explorer. (In case if you do not have font rendered, it is the last menu item.)
Press Ctrl+Shift+Esc to launch Task Manager.
Menu File > Run New Task: type
explorerand confirm.
It will be the process with the file explorer thumbnail in the processes tab, if you can even see that, if its not there, click file tab(Top left of task manager), NewTask, Then type Explorer.exe then run that. see what that does
If that doesn't work, Try updating your Graphics Drivers
