Windows 10 will not shutdown and desktop icons disappear when clicking refresh

Question

I am having some issues with my Windows 10 installation. Currently I cannot shut down my computer without physically pressing and holding the power button on the front of my computer. If I click the start window button on the bottom left then click 'power' -> 'Shut down' nothing happens at all. The start pop-up disappears and my PC will not shut down. The same happens for 'restart'. Sleep seems to work fine.

Additionally, and not sure if this is a separate issue, when I right-click on the desktop and click refresh, all my icons disappear and do not return for about a full minute. This is concerning as I have a very powerful 4GHz 4790k Intel water cooled system with 32 gigs of memory and a 1TB PCI-E nvme hard drive which is normally ridiculously responsive, so I'm not sure whats going on here. Any advice?

Answer 1

Interestingly enough, this issue was caused by my SD card reader. The card reader came with my NZXT case and I never used it until recently. I left an SD card in the slot and never thought anything of it. Well in diagnosing this issue, I saw the "Safely remove hardware" icon in the bottom right. It said the issue was with my SD card reader, so I clicked remove and took out my SD card and now my PC both restarts AND the desktop refresh works perfectly.

Keep this in mind if you are having a similar issue. See if you have any hardware that is causing an issue. Maybe load up device manager and have a look.