Messed up Start menu/taskbar

I seem to have done something very wrong with WinXP...

I have WinXP Pro SP1 with all updates (except for one item that I've installed so many times yet still is "Ready for install "...), using an account w. admin privileges. But then I created a Limited account, and when I login to it, the Start Menu icon takes up the entire taskbar, and the taskbar size has been doubled. So essentially I have this giant, green Start icon hiding everything, including quicklaunch, system tray, and the clock (which are all enabled in the start menu properties). I can resize the taskbar, but all it does is shift the giant Start Menu icon up or down. However, if I increase the size to >3x normal height (the taskbar is on the bottom of the desktop, fyi), I can begin to see the time and system tray on the right, but the top half is obscured by the start menu icon. I have other griefs, including the fact that I can't see any text in Word XP or IE6, but this seems to be the biggest problem.

This happens once I restart after creating the account, and switching it to an Admin solves all the problems. And any non-admin type (power user, etc...) has the same problems.

Please help guys

 

Have you done anything in policy (Run: gpedit.msc)?

It almost sounds as though your policy settings have gone haywire, especially since the Admin account was spared.

Just for fun, go to Start > Run and type:
gpupdate /force /boot

Reboot if the machine doesn't do so by itself.

Does this change anything?