Had this issue
Started game, hit play and the game froze with changed mouse icon and music in the background.
Alt+ctrl+del worked.
Reinstalled game. After first start I had the critical error and report a bug window pop up. After that same issue as earlier.
Changed in the GW2 options to start the game with windows 7 compatibility. It took more time to start the game, but now it plays normally.
Everything happend after windows update like yesterday (today is 11.11.2021)
Probably windows moved/restricted some data and this is the result.
task manager didnt respond for me too, but only when i tried to click with mouse Using arrows and tab worked ok