Windows 10 3 instances of each app open when launching via Start menu Search

[Brandon-W]

Since this afternoon, launching programs by typing in the Start search bar will open 3 instances of that app. So if I press the WINDOWS KEY, type "Notepad" or "Note" then hit ENTER, three Notepad windows will open. It does this for any program that can run multiple instances/windows at once (Edge, Chrome, Word, File Explorer, etc).


I first noticed this happening when I had to open device manager this afternoon to re-install my Synaptics Touchpad driver. Somehow, 3 instances of Device Manager had opened instead of 1. (Occasionally I re-install the touchpad driver because the two-finger scroll and any gestures suddenly stop working. I assume that's another unrelated problem.)


Things I did today that could be the cause:

• I ran a .batch file that looped Cinebench R15 for benchmarking purposes. The command, which I did not come up with myself (I know, probably a bad idea to run a command I found online), is as follows:

for /l %%x in (1, 1, 13) do (​

"C:\Users\[Name]\Downloads\Installers\CINEBENCH_R15\Cinebench R15.exe" -cb_cpux >>"C:\Users\[Name]\Downloads\Documents\CB15.txt"​

)​

pause​

What the .bat does is open Cinebench, run the multi-threaded benchmark (-cb_cpux part I think), then output the result in CB15.txt. It runs the benchmark 13 times. I am not sure that the 1, 1, part of the command relates do. The batch file did do what it was intended to do, so I'm not sure if it could be the culprit.​

• As mentioned above, I re-updated my Synaptics Touchpad driver (to an older version) to fix the touchpad scrolling. I have done this multiple times before and have never had any issue with it.
• Opening programs using the actualy Start menu tiles did NOT cause multiple instances to be run
• Starting programs via "Run" (WIN + R) sometimes (rarely) opened 3 instances (e.g. for Notepad), or at least I think it did when I was diagnosing the issue
  • Update: "Run" no longer opens 3 instances, only 1 like normal (yay!)

Things I tried to fix the problem with no success:

• Restarting the laptop
• Updating Windows (to latest 1903 Cumulative update)
  
• Ending the "Start" task in Task Manager multiple times
• I rebooted in Safe Mode (without Networking) and the problem still persisted

System info:

• Model: HP Spectre x360 15" (15-df0008ca)
  • i7-8565U, 16GB RAM, 512 GB SSD
• OS: Windows 10 Education (while trying to fix my issue, I updated to the latest version available: 1903, build 18362.387)
  • I generally update ASAP so the previous version of Windows that I was running, when the issue first appeared, could not have been more than a week old.
  • Previously ran Windows 10 Home, until about 2 weeks ago.

I would really appreciate if anyone has an idea of why this is happening. It's mostly just annoying and can be dealt with, but I'd like to know if something was wrong with my device. Thanks in advance! Cheers!

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