Hey, 

so I've got a brand new laptop (literally opened it ve been installing mcafee and microsoft stuff etc and its been just fine. But when i went to turn it off i realised that swiping to the top right of the screen (which usually brings up the "search, start, turn off" etc buttons didnt work. Neither did it work to the left. I then tried the start button on the keyboard which had no effect at all, and even the start icon in the bottom doesnt do anything. I dont know what happened, if i've messed something up or what but i'm kind of worried considering I only got the laptop yesterday!

Any help would be much appreciated thanks!!

Can you go for a System Restore? If possible, uninstall McAfee and recheck the issue.

More assistance:

How to  refresh, reset, or restore your PC

Hi swillin,

"so I've got a brand new laptop "
Considering this is brand new machine ,please ensure the machine has got the latest updates .To get a better performance ,please always keep it up to date .

Will the issue persist or just occur randomly ?

Someone else came across the similar issue and resolved it by restarting the windows explorer process ,we can have a try .(Ctrl+Alt+Delete to open the task manager)

Please also try to check the following registry keys and ensure they are set to "0".
" DisableTLCorner ", " DisableTRCorner "
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ImmersiveShell\EdgeUI

Best r