Solved: Windows 10 unable to type anything anywhere issue.

Recently, Windows 10 stopped letting me type anything in Search, in Start Menu, Cortana. Even calc.exe would not let me type!

Here is my story and the (so called) fix.

After much work and not wanting to do a clean reinstall, I was able to narrow it down to ctfmon.exe not running... (ctfmon is also known as CTF Loader, btw.)

I know from other fresh and clean Windows 10 installs that ctfmon does not appear to be running, so I am still confused on the why it allows this computer system to type.

If I kill the ctfmon.exe task, via Task Manager, then immediately again I am unable to type in anything metro-related. The old control panel search still works. Explorer still works. Everything works, except for new these new fangled Windows 10 apps.

If I run ctfmon.exe (Hint: you can press Win+R to run ctfmon.exe, or navigate in explorer to c:\Windows\System32), then typing immediately starts working again.

I still don't know why it stopped working or even why this fix works, but it does work [on my machine]! (Windows 10 Pro version 1607, if that helps anyone)