All of a sudden several things are acting weird, hope someone has an idea what is the cause

All of a sudden I have noticed several things are happening or not working as they should, I think I will just list them one at a time below. they are not in order of any way it seems that each thing has happened in the last few days.

The first thing I noticed was I use StarDock Start 11 which allows me to make the start menu look like win 7, win 10 etc. after a restart the other day I noticed that the start menu went back to the Win 11 start menu. I reinstalled Start 11 again and restarted and it was working. after another reboot it went back to the Win 11 menu??

Then I noticed that a few of the programs I have set to start when Windows starts are not starting. I've check to see if they are still set to start with Windows and they are. I checked the task manager and they are all listed as startup Apps I can open each one and they work fine but a few are not opening when Windows starts.

I often open google and you my mic to talk and it types in the search field, I'm not talking about the mic button on the end of the search space. I use my mic to dictate emails, search bar for google and Firefox. I've noticed that chrome and Firefox are no longer using my mic. I've made sure that the permissions are set to allow apps to use my mic.

The last thing is on the last Windows update I noticed that in file explorer the icons for delete, rename etc. now had the names typed over the icons which I knew was coming with a new update a while back. Now the names are not typed over the icons any longer.

Also I would normally use my mic to talk instead of typing here in the forum and that is not working either. I've check browser specific permissions and everything look good, I am confused.

These things all happened in the last few days I noticed one after another. Its very strange for all these things to all of a sudden change. The only thing I can think of is I use Ccleaner and they have the health check and it tells me which drivers are out of date and software updater and performance optimizer. I think I used it for the performance optimizer because my browser windows seem to be opening slower. I never used the options in Ccleaner before other than cleaning cookie and temp files on close of browser. As I was typing the problems above I was thinking what could cause them and it come to mind that Ccleaner is the only different thing I have done other than what I have done for years...

Not sure if that is what caused all the above issues but something did?


I appreciate any and all reply's and I won't be online much longer so if I don't reply until tomorrow don't think I don't care about your help.

Ron

Logical Ron said:

The last thing is on the last Windows update…

Click to expand...

Did you just answer your own question or have SOME of these things been happening since before the update?

I have been avoiding 24H2, like the plague.

Ron, you could try checking Windows Update and installing todays “Cumulative Update Preview”?
26100.3915 (24H2)

you could try in a command prompt as Administrator
DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

let that run until it has finished.

then run in the same command prompt window as Admin
sfc /scannow

and let that run until it has finished.
if there are any errors a restart will be required after they have finished.

best of luck, Steve ..

Logical Ron said:

The only thing I can think of is I use Ccleaner and they have the health check and it tells me which drivers are out of date and software updater and performance optimizer.

Click to expand...

Performance optimizer does put "infrequently used" start up items to sleep. If you haven't already done so, I would turn it off. You can specify which items it puts to sleep. (This is based on my recall of using the paid for version of Ccleaner - I have been using only the free version for some time now and can't use the performance optimiser, which I never found particularly useful anyway.)