No taskbar but otherwise everything well

My taskbar has recently started disappearing and I am wondering what could be the cause for it. All the desktop icons are still there, and Ctrl-Esc brings up the Start menu alright. Just the taskbar is nowhere to be seen. And no, this is NOT the simple matter of resizing it to nothingness. Its really not there at all.

I tried restarting Explorer but still the same result. Rebooting helps, but only for a while and then we go off again.

Nothing special in the Event viewer and no error messages. My Antivirus is up-to-date too.

Is there some where to debug this, or some other way to start the taskbar manually?

 

Hello jn64,

The next time the Taskbar is visible, right click on an empty space around the clock area > Properties and look in the Taskbar tab.

Is the always on top checked?
Is the Auto Hide checked?
Is the task bar locked?

Regards - Charles

 

Here the requested settings

Is the always on top checked? YES
Is the Auto Hide checked? NO
Is the task bar locked? NO

 

Hmmmm - well, that took care of the usual causes.

Try getting a start->run line, keying in

Code:

sfc /scannow

and OK.

 

This has helped more than a few in the past:

Taskbar Repair Tool Plus!
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/taskbarplus!.htm

---other rarer possibilities----
Some have had this glitch if they have previously used some tweak, policy, or gpedit change to disable the "save settings on exist" policy.
NOTE: There was a tweak going around that suggests that one can arrange their personal desktop settings and keep others from changing this by then enacting this policy. I assume the glitch may occur if explorer crashes (for a multitude of reasons) and is restarted by windows but the taskbar is not reset for you (the current user), due to this policy, unless the user logs out and logs back in again (as one would do if they rebooted for instance). To sum up, you may want to check if you have this policy and see if it's value is 0 for disabled or 1 for enabled. If it is enabled (1) try disabling it or change the value to 0. You can look yourself, manually by using regedit or use a Kelly reg patch that sets this policy to 0:

see number 54:
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer]
"NoSaveSettings "=dword:00000000

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run]
"SystemTray "= "SysTray.Exe "

---even a more remote possibility but worth still worth a shot----
This is referencing win95/98/me/nt problem/fix but you could try method 1 and 2.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;134237

 

Excellent

Good to know! Now, for whatever reason, my system has somehow repaired itself and this problem seems to have disappeared for good. I'll keep fingers crossed and if/when it happens again I'll take these measures. Cheers