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Reboot Still Solves Simple Win10 Problems

As my day was getting rolling, I got a support request from the Boss. My wife Dina said “I can’t access Chrome. I saw you installed updates yesterday. What’s up?” And so indeed I had. When I went upstairs, I quickly observed she was right. No response when clicking the Taskbar icon for Chrome. Ditto when accessing Chrome through the Start menu. No response when right-clicking the Chrome entry in the Start menu, and selecting “Run as administrator,” either. So of course, that’s when I tried the next panacea in fixing Windows weirdnesses. I restarted the PC, and observed that yet again, reboot still solves simple Win10 problems.

After Update KB4482887, Chrome becomes moribund on my wife’s PC until a second reboot returns it to action.

Why Reboot Still Solves Simple Win10 Problems

When an update is applied, and the restart to cement its changes ditto, lingering traces might still need cleanup. In searching around on Google, I see this kind of issue reported pretty frequently. If a second reboot doesn’t fix an unresponsive application (like Chrome), there are other things you can try, including:

  • Reboot in Safe Mode, then reboot again (a more extreme version of the simple reboot)
  • Clear Cache and Cookies in Chrome (this means Chrome is working again, though)
  • Turn off Hardware Acceleration in Chrome (relaunch after you make this change)
  • Sometimes, more esoteric fixes like installing the Reliable Multicast Protocol or Resetting the Windows Sockets catalog (netsh winsock reset) may help

Great article on all these fixes, and more: Fix Chrome Browser Not Working on Windows 10. Also, this TenForums.com search turns up useful stuff, too: Chrome not working after Windows Update.

For me, it was kind of a nostalgia trip to realize that the spiritual successor to the old “three-fingered salute” (CTRL-ALT-DEL) still helps solve many common problems. I remember it well from the old DOS and early Windows days!

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