Unable to right-click my Windows icon on the taskbar

Question

For some reason I'm no longer able to right-click my Windows icon. Normally I would use it as a shortcut to quickly Shutdown or Restart my computer, but now it requires two extra clicks.

• All other taskbar icons (programs, etc.) function normally.
• I've already tried restarting my File Explorer in the Task Manager

In the gif below you can also see that the cursor moves up/right every time I right-click, which is very strange.

Answer 1

Try following these steps:

• Launch the Registry Editor as an administrator
• Navigate to the following key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ ImmersiveShell\Launcher
• Click Edit
• Click New
• Select DWORD (32-bit) Value
• Name it UseExperience.
• Double-click the newly created item and set the value to 0.
• Click OK
• Close the Registry Editor and then restart your computer -- or just restart Explorer.

If that doesn't work, you may also try running Powershell as administrator with the following commands:

PowerShell -ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted

Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml"}

There may be some errors you can ignore, but when it finishes it should be working... but if it's still not, there is a folder that may be corrupted or missing in your user profile:

%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\WinX

If you have access to a different machine that's not having issues, you should be able to copy the entire WinX folder into yours and see if that corrects the problem. If you don't have access to a different machine, there's a possibility that you can just create another user profile on your machine, see if your right-click is working there, and copy that folder over if it is.

References: Microsoft Answers, reddit, techmesto, and urtech.