Windows 10 icons disappear on boot. Related to Winsock??

[DonS]

Heya all!

I have an issue that is really boggling me. I have a client with an upgraded Windows 10 laptop. The issue that is occurring is when he boots up, the icons will not be present. With some Google Fu, I super randomly ran across a suggested fix.

netsh winsock reset.

I was like, ok, no way, what the hell would that have to do with disappearing icons. Sure enough, I try it, reboot, icons are back. Rebooted a few more times, no issue. Handed it back to the customer and told him hey, roll with it for a few days, tell me if the issue appears again.

Sure enough, it did! I left him instructions on how to run the winsock reset. Every time he did and would reboot, the issue would be resolved, at least temporarily. But the issue will persist randomly yet regularly.

The computer is clean, no viruses, malware, or spyware. SFC comes up with no file integrity errors.

I am really at a loss on the correlation here. Any thoughts would be welcome.

 

[Kitten Kong]

My in laws laptop is doing the same thing.

I'm still looking for the permanent fix on this one too.

 

[mraikes]

That's an interesting problem. I see that resetting winsock to fix certain user profile issues goes back a few years, but is often related to a botched update or other diagnosable failure.

I'm curious - are only the desktop icons missing, or are all user-specific things missing - similar to a temp profile? When the problem occurs, are there no related errors in the event logs? And all normal services are running correctly in the background? What if you create a new profile and migrate the user from the old one, does the problem continue?

Sorry for all the questions, but this piques my interest for some reason.

 

[DonS]

Not at all, questions are good! Need to figure this goof of an issue out.

User desktop icons disappear.
Taskbar icons remain and are usable.
When this occurs, user will also receive a windows pop up from the taskbar "Windows could not connect to the Group Policy Client service"

Creating a new user and migrating data was next on my mind, but I wanted to touch base here first to see if anyone had an idea on fix, first.

 

[Mick]

There is an (alleged) reg hack fix published here: http://triplescomputers.com/blog/ca...t-connect-to-the-group-policy-client-service/ Says it's for Win 8, so you'd be chancing your luck, but....

 

[cypress]

Very interested to know what the fix is as well.

 

[DonS]

Mick, I also saw that page during my initial trouble shooting. I held off on trying it due to no actual confirmation for Windows 10. Also, so far it really has been impossible to determine if the Group Policy connection error is even related to the missing icons, or just a coincidental "other" issue.

 

[Mick]

Understood. Still, if you download the .reg file they talk about, it should be easily possible to modify it to reverse/undo any changes that the original does, so you have a fix if needed. There does seem to be one guy posting (about two up from the end) who says it fixed his Win 10 probs. It may be nothing to do with your icons prob, but at least you'll have ruled it out.

 

[Metanis]

Have you removed locally cached group policies? A bad one could be halting the userinit process before it paints the desktop.

 

[DonS]

I have not, can you please advise how to do so on Windows 10?

Have you removed locally cached group policies? A bad one could be halting the userinit process before it paints the desktop.

 

[ComputerRepairTech]

If this issue isn't resolved in the next few days I volunteer to take a look at no charge.

Edit: because it sounds like an interesting puzzle.