Hi, I'm the fixer for many friends, and this friend had a crash where she lost the ability to get into windows, so she played around with it trying to install the OS again. Now she brought it to me with the following problem. It opens up, turns on, looks OK, until it reaches the desktop. For a split second the task bar only appears, then it disappears, and you have only the pointer and the desktop wallpaper. Nothing else is available. I have tried reinstalling again, to no avail. I have also tried going back to an earlier version of the registry, but we get the exact same results. Does anyone have any suggestions? Thanks.... Artist

If you hover with your mouse down in the taskbar area can you get it to come up? There is an option called autohide for the task bar that may have a check mark in it. Try all 4 corners as the taskbar may also be moved. If you get it to show rclick on it so the menu will pop up and make sure autohide does not have a check mark in the box.

If you get it to show but the icons that are supposed to be in it do not show rclick it again and go to the top where it says toolbars and make sure quick launch has a checkmark next to it.

Hi Topaz, Thanks... I knew about autohide, and I have already tried all kinds of things like that. I've left clicked, and right clicked all over the place. :( So far, no dice, but thanks for the thought.

Lost my taskbar once. It somehow got moved to the top of the screen in autohide mode (which I don't normally use). There is usually a short delay before the taskbar comes out of autohide, so give each edge of your screen a good long hover with the mouse. Even "bump" it a couple of times. Ray

Press Ctrl - Alt - Delete and check of explorer is running. Explorer is your shell. Do you have the same problem in Safe Mode?

Hi Harley, No, explorer is not running. I have done the ctrl. alt, delete, and it looks like a video driver is showing up in the close task window. That is the only thing showing. I'm trying to figure out how I could put it back in from the CD drive, which I can't seem to get to, though I'm using the C:/ promt. When I type D:/ it says bad command or something like that.. I went and found the driver, and have tried to put it on a CD with another computer. It's a zip file, though and it doesn't want to unzip to the CD drive. I'm still working on that....just was wondering if anyone else ever ran up across this problem of no icons, no task bar, and they are definately not there...not hidden, really not there. If you have any other ideas we'd sure appreciate them... Thanks...