No Desktop icons, hourglass in taskbar

Dell Inspiron 3000 (3847) Windows 10 machine - Boots in normal time. Desktop wallpaper appears, taskbar appears, no desktop icons.

When cursor is moved to taskbar, it turns to an hourglass.

Disk activity is minimal as witnessed on the tower's blinking light.

Ctrl - Alt - Del to get to screen which shows Task Manager selection. Click on Task Manager. Nothing happens.

Safe mode has the same issue.

History - the machine was put into service March 2014.
Feb 2, 2020 I upgraded it from W7 to W10
Feb 22, 2020 It was here for the same problem. At that time I was able to do a System Restore to an earlier date. Now it shows no restore points.

Thoughts please

 

Did that. Something else is going on. It's just hanging. For instance, when I first went in there to ensure desktop items were enabled, it looked OK. Then I tried to to it again. When I right-clicked on the screen, I couldn't get back to the same place to see if desktop items were enabled. Like it may have still been doing something since the last time I checked. I started a chkdsk a couple of hours ago. It's 97% stage 5 with no errors noted.

 

Yeah, it was fine for a while. Probably didn't like an update.

 

I didn't want to reinstall programs, printers, and whatever else.

 

The disk passed chkdsk.
It was working fine yesterday. Today it's not.
I was able to use the Troubleshooting area to uninstall the latest quality update. Well, it said it uninstalled the latest quality update. When I restarted I got the "Getting Windows ready" followed by the "Working on Updates". I had not tried uninstalling updates from the Troubleshooting screen.
It was unable to uninstall the latest feature update. Maybe there wasn't one.
Two months ago it had 1909 build 18363.657. There's been a couple of updates since then.

I'll mess with the RAM next.

What are you suggesting for ways to work around update problems? I'll give whatever you have up your sleeve a try.

 

Thanks Seth, I don't think that will work in this situation. I have the desktop wallpaper - that window rock photo. No desktop icons.
I have a taskbar, but nothing loaded. Just the clock, Windows logo, Search glass, Cortana circle and Task View icon.
No QuickLaunch toolbar.

I can't get to anything because when I bring the cursor to the tashbar, it turns into an hourglass. So I can't click on anything in the taskbar because the cursor has turned into an hours glass.

I tried to create a new folder on the desktop. I right clicked on the desktop and selected New > Folder. The cursor turned to an hour glass and did nothing. Now the cursor is a perpetual hour glass. No arrow anywhere. No new folder. I clicked a few times on the desktop and got an arrow cursor again. It still turns to an hourglass when I get to the taskbar.

It has no Internet access because the Ethernet cable is disconnected. Wouldn't that serve the same purpose of disabling updates?

 

Oh yeah, System Restore says there are no restore points.

 

On shift-restart, getting an svchost.exe System Error message: The System detected an overrun of a stack-based buffer in this application. That's followed by an exception unknown software exception error (yes - good grammar MS!) Looked that up and it's corrupted system files.

Again pointing to hard drive corruption. So maybe there was a hard drive problem 2 months ago when it came in for the same issue. I did run chkdsk back then. No errors were reported. Guess I got lucky when System Restore was able to fix the problem. Not so lucky this time.

 

I tried running sfc /scannow from the Command prompt via the Troubleshooting menu. For some reason I didn't think it was running on the correct partition. How does one know which partition it is checking. For instance, when I ran the chkdsk, I had to run chkdsk d: /r. If I didn't include the d: it said the drive was locked and is write protected. So the partition it was running on wasn't the operating system.

I just tried sf /scannow again. It said it was beginning the scan and then I watches as it proressed thru the verification. After about 20 seconds, it reported Verification 100% complete and that Windows Resource Protection could not perform the requested operation. I don't run sfc enough to know if this is normal.

 

I did sfc /verifyonly. It reported Windows Resource Protection found integrity violations. How about that. I'll remove the drive and look at the log file located at Windows\logs\cbs.

It also noted "For offline repairs, details are included in the log file provided by the /OFFLOGFILE flag. That's an area I haven't stepped foot into yet.