# The Windows start menu bar is not showing



## lwabbott (Jul 8, 2008)

Please help:

I don't know what or how, but for some reason the Window start menu task bar will not show up. It was showing when I turned the computer off through the regular shutdown.

I have restarted several times but to now avail.

email
707-419-5304

I depend on my computer for income and research, etc..
ray:


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## justpassingby (Mar 11, 2007)

Hi lwabbott and welcome to TSF !

I removed your mail since leaving it in plain text on an open forum will get you plenty of spam in your mail box in no time once bots will have found it. I can remove your phone number as well if you want.

Is it only the task bar or the task bar and icons ? In the first case have you tried dragging the mouse to the bottom of the screen to check that it was not unlocked and minimized ? What happens when you press the windows key ?

If all the icons are gone as well then can you access the task manager by pressing ctrl+alt+del ? If so what happens when you go to file => new task and type explorer.exe ? Go to file => new task and type chkdsk c: /R. You'll be prompted to restart the computer and your hard drive will be checked for errors. See how it goes.

Do you have the XP install CD and what service pack is on the CD ? If this is some brand computer that didn't come with a CD then what's the brand and model ?


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## ThaSniper (Nov 2, 2008)

Hello.

I have this very problem, as described initially.

The task bar with the start button and the desktop buttons aren't showing.

Crt alt del brings the task manager. If I run explorer.exe, the explorer comes up and I can browse the files. I used this method to run the antivirus, and no virus found. Running chkdsk doesn't bring anything new, the scan doesn't seem to detect problems. I also attempted to recover for a far restore point, it seemed to go well but nothing changed. 

This is a windows XP Home, that had the SP2 installed and in an attempt to fix this problem I installed SP3. No changes. Runned the windows update, installed like 9 new updates, but still no changes.

I don't know what else to do. Please help!


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## justpassingby (Mar 11, 2007)

Hi ThaSniper and welcome to TSF !

Run the system file checker : task manager => file => new task => sfc /scannow (mind the space after sfc). If you're asked for the XP CD you'll need one with SP3, google for "slipstream SP3" to learn how to create one. There's a bug with XP Home that makes sfc ask for the XP Pro CD, just keep hitting retry. Don't do anything else while sfc is running and restart the computer once it's done.


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## ThaSniper (Nov 2, 2008)

It seems I fixed it already.

Not sure what was wrong. I spent many hours around this with updates, and checks, and tests. Some updating results (including a low risk worm removal notice) only shown up after the problem was fixed, thats why I don't realy know what did this and what fixed it.

Last thing I did was running a tool called Taskbar Repair Tool Plus! that one of it options is fixing this problem as described. What this program does is fixing problems by running vb scripts. Anyway I had to resart after using the program, and it worked. But the program didn't seem to require reboot. I really wonder what happened...

Anyway, thank you for helping. I didn't knew about SFC or either slipstreaming SP3 onto windows cd. This may come handy some day. :smooch:


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