Taskbar/open windows not showing up

hope I can explain this correctly, my DH was on the computer all day filling out some applications and at one point was having problems, so I have no idea what he might have been playing around with. ANYWAYS, now my open windows do not show up on my taskbar (in between my quicklaunch and the area where the clock is). I have tried playing with all the properties and such when I right click, tried dragging on what I think might be called the slider next to the start button, stretched the taskbar up til it takes up half the screen and nothing. Basically once I minimize something, it's gone, no way to open it up again. I am used to have multiple windows open and this is making me nuts. PLEASE PLEASE HELP !

 

Taksbar not showing open windows

Hi,
have you installed all latest Patches / hot fixes ! is their any reg cleaner their in your system !?
have you tried with
taskbar-> properties -> group simlar taskbar buttons


Regards

 

I have done all windows updates, not sure what hotfixes are and I don't have a regcleaner either.
thanks for your reply.
tried the grouping similar buttons and it doesn't change anything.

 

turn off all toolbars. does it work now?

 

hmmm, tried that, the only toolbar I have checked is my quicklaunch, when I uncheck that my taskbar goes into hiding and will not come out at all. ?However, when I am in the little toolbars window that pops up and it shows a "what my taskbar should look like" preview thing, THAT looks the way it should, showing the open windows. Just wished my taskbar actually looked like this.

Any other ideas ?

 

Try downloading and running the script on line 240, left side.
Programs Aren't Minimized in the Taskbar

If that doesn't work, can you still use alt+tab to get at the minimized windows?

 

IT WORKED IT WORKED IT WORKED, not sure what happened but THANK YOU so very much. This was making me nuts, I am a multitasker and it was well making me nuts. Thank you sooooo very much.
(btw for the record the alt + tab function was still working).
And just cuz I am always curious, any idea what DH did that made this happen ?

Thanks again.

 

Glad to hear it worked for you!

I know there used to be a greeting card program that you would be prompted to install when you visited a site that used it. Installing the program caused this for some. It was called Friend Greeting but this was a few years ago and I would think that would be fixed by now. You can have a look at this from McAfee. If it's installed it should be in your add>remove programs list according to this article. If not, I'd still suspect some type of software got installed that caused it. Take a good look in add>remove programs and see if there's anything in there that shouldn't be. Better yet, ask him if he installed anything. I'd place my bets on something like this.
http://us.mcafee.com/virusInfo/default.asp?id=description&virus_k=99760

 

that does sound alot like what was going on with my computer, but there's only a couple of things I don't recognize in my add/remove files, one is "select cash back ", one is an adobe (he was working on filling in an application that was in adobe with the fill in the blanks option), "spelling dictionaries for adobe reader package ", and the other is "Abby Fine Reader 5.0 Sprint ". So I am gonna look for some info on them, just cuz I have that need to know, ya know !
thanks again.

 

seamour--Select CashBack does not sound good
http://www.pchell.com/support/bargainbuddy.shtml
http://www.google.com/search?q="select+cashback"&sa=N&revid=940893980&qpos=0&oi=revisions_inline
The others you mention in ControlPanel|Add/Remove sound legitimate. Adobe makes several well-considered programs including Reader. ABBYY is an Optical Character Recognition program that comes with several scanners and can be purchased separately.

 

yeah, I was thinking it didn't sound so good, I removed it and will run Spy Bot again, hopefully that will pick up any leftover ****. Maybe I will run it in safe mode too.
Thanks, I did search for that on yahoo but came up blank.
Mic

edited to add, spybot found these two which were similiar to the ones listed on pchell, but not exact, I went ahead and removed them, if they were the changes I did from Zanders post and my windows disapear again, I can always redo that I figure.
settings:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Security Center\AntiVirusdisableNotify!=dword:0
and the second was similiar except replace AVdisable with Firewalldisable