I have an Asus laptop (model# X555L) running windows 10, is starts up appearing fine, desktop and gadgets showing, but the mouse clicks on program icons, and no programs ever show up, its like its a dummy GUI, just there for looks.
If you single click on a program icon, does it become highlighted?
If not, you've either been hacked or someone is playing a prank on you. Right-click and select Personalize. Change your desktop background to some solid color. Do you still see the "program icons"?
Okay so first off I'm not real familiar with Windows 10. I am still running Windows 7 on my personal computer this is one that someone had got last Christmas and it started acting up on them it loads very slow and while I was watching it load the icons of the desktop show up and then all of a sudden , there's a new task buy that shows up on the left as well as the lower task bar I can't seem to get in it the operate although the desktop just went dark and came back up and lite up brighter, may may not be fully loading. I just noticed that it does do a rollover on the start menu back button and other icons in the taskbar. I clicked on the start button it showed me that it changed as I clicked but I'm still waiting for the start menu to come up.
Try creating a new user profile and see if that works. I've had user profiles get corrupted a couple times in W10 to where the stupid start menu won't even open.