start button doesn't work

Hi, I'm new to this forum. I found out my start button doesn't work when I tried to shut down half an hour ago. When I press on it nothing happens. What can I do? Thnx, Grassman22

Hi grassman22, welcome to WhatTheTech.

An alternative way to shutdown or restart is to press Ctrl+Alt+Del then click on Shutdown and select the action you want to take.

Many times, this kind of problem is caused by some kind of malware infection, and typically things get worse over time as other things stop working.

Go to the Spyware / Malware / Virus Removal forum, read the info there and follow the posted directions. Once you receive a clean bill of health, come back here if you have any additional questions or concerns or it turns out not to be a malware problem.

Please be patient as that is a very busy area. If you do not receive a response in 3 days, post a message here: http://forums.whatthetech.com/What_Do_If_Y…ays_t78698.html

Post back here once you've received a clean bill of health if you still have problems.

Hi, In the end I found it out by my self the Task Manager bypass. After I rebooted the problem seemed to go away. Spybot and AVG found nothing and working with a computer virus forum's expert a couple of weeks ago regarding a different problem I found no melware. However, lets put this problem aside for a moment. I have a simeler issue that's been persistent for a long time and maybe you know something about it: when I open Start>Turn Off Computer before I get to press the Shut Down button the window disappears. Only on the second try does the shut down succeed. Is that an OS installation problem in your eyes or again a potential virus? Thnx, Grassman22

What was the fix for the first problem? The 2nd one (shutdown window) doesn't sound like a malware infection. Please post specs for your computer (make, model, cpu speed, amount of ram, etc.). Also, if you boot to Safe Mode, does the shutdown problem still occur?

I'm not sure what you are referring to when you say the first problem. If you mean the one about the Start button not responding then, as I said, I bypassed it by using Task Manager>Shutdown. After the reboot the problem seemd to go away. That kind of bug only happened once before, and again, restart did the trick. I don't know how to "fix" it. About the problem with the Start>Turn Off Computer window that disappears, It's hard to test the problem since it doesn't appear on regular basis. I could try it one time and all will seem alright. Another time I wouldn't even be able to get pass the Start menu before it vanishes. So I don't know what good it will do if I test it on Safe Mode. I'll have to spend a lot of time on Safe Mode in order to assess whether the problem occurs there or not., Specs for my computer: Intel Pentum D CPU 2.80GHz 2.81 GHz, 1 GB of RAM I'm not an expert if you need more details about my computer please let me know which and how to get them. Thnx, Grassman22

Without some way to reliably reproduce the problem, this is going to be very difficult to fix.

One thing you could try is create another account and run with it for awhile, see if the problem re-occurs. You could even copy everything over from your current account to the new account so it will look and feel the same, just a different name.

Pick a good name if you want to try this as you will keep it if the problem does not happen there.

Follow the directions here to create a new account and copy all your user data over to it:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=811151

Or follow these directions posted in GeeksToGo.com

• Boot to Safe Mode, login as Administrator
• Show hidden files by opening My Computer, Tools menu, View tab, check Show Hidden Files/Folders and uncheck Hide extensions for known filetypes. Click Apply then OK.
• Create a new Administrator level account via Control Panel / User Accounts.. Pick a good name as you may be keeping it.
• Reboot the computer.
• Login with the new account so the folder structure under Documents and Settings gets created, then log off.
• Boot to Safe Mode, login as Administrator
• Browse to c:\documents and settings\OldUserAccount
• Select everything in that folder except the three files called ntuser.dat, ntuser.dat.log, and ntuser.ini.
• Copy all those files into c:\documents and settings\NewUserAccount. Reply Yes or Yes to all when duplicate folders or files are found.
• Reboot the computer and login with your New user account.

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