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| If there is one unsung characteristic of Windows, over and above the many others, which is
ensuring Windows keeps its mass market dominance as the tool of convenience, it has to be the generic Taskbar which sits sedately along the bottom of our screens.
Macs and Linux have their own unique renditions of a taskbar but only the iconic Windows' design,
which has needed no changes since 1995, can truly be regarded as both perfectly-proportioned and
exquisitely unobtrusive. |
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| We all take this fixture totally for granted, however, never giving a moment's thought to just how
crucial it is. Yet the taskbar is the one thing which gives us the fast, instant, always-visible access to everything we could possibly need in order to do anything we want to do. Take it away and the computer is virtually crippled. |
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| So, what a dire tragedy it would be if your taskbar were to suddenly disappear one day,
and could not be restored, not even by rebooting the computer. Fortunately, this
is an extremely rare eventuality - but is one that does befall a few unfortunate people
from time to time. |
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| There are three main reasons why a taskbar could go missing. The first one is due
to an accidental action by the user or somebody else with access to the same computer.
Secondly, due to a mischievous action by another person with access to the computer. And thirdly, due to any user of the computer unwittingly allowing certain malicious software, which inadvertently corrupts that part of the Windows' OS, to infect the system. |
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| Whatever the cause of the problem, working your way through the following separate lines
of attack will, sooner or later, have a healthy taskbar up and running again. |
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| Negotiating a computer with no taskbar may seem impossible at first glance. But, by
pressing the keys Ctrl+Esc, this should still bring up the Start menu in just the same way as
clicking on the Start button. If you forget that keyboard shortcut, then simply double-click on the (My) Computer icon on the desktop and browse to wherever you need to go in the normal way. |
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| If you are aware that the disappearance of, or some other serious problem with the taskbar coincided with your computer being infected with a trojan or the like, or after attempts to eradicate any such infection, jump straight to the final step 8 in the RH column. Otherwise, simply work your way one-by-one through the following steps. |
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| 1. Recover a hidden Taskbar by finding it and unhiding it |
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| In this simple first step, we will assume the cause of a missing taskbar is not due to anything too serious. For instance, it may simply have been moved from its customary place to, say, the top of the screen, or to either side of the screen, and set on 'Auto hide'. This could have been done by anybody with access to the computer, like a joker in the family, or a mischievous colleague if the computer concerned is one at work. In this instance, the taskbar is still there, and okay, but that might not occur to the user because they can no longer see it. |
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To correct this, start off by right-clicking on the desktop > Properties > Active
Desktop (if listed) > untick all ticked options (so that no items are left ticked) > right-click on the desktop > Refresh. Now press Ctrl+Esc to display the Start menu*. If that also causes the taskbar to appear, that will confirm it was merely hidden. With the Start menu now visible, negotiate your way to the Taskbar's settings' dialog - the route varies depending on your version of Windows: for Windows 98, click Settings > Taskbar and Start Menu > Taskbar Options tab; for XP, click Control Panel > Appearance and Themes > Taskbar and Start Menu.
* In the case of XP, if Ctrl+Esc failed to pull up the Start menu, you can still get to the
taskbar settings by creating a temporary shortcut to the Control Panel. To do this, right-click on the desktop > New > Shortcut > at the Command line field, type in the sole word control > Enter. Double-click on the new shortcut (to open Control Panel) > Appearance and Themes etc. |
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| Once at the taskbar settings' dialog, untick all the boxes > Apply > OK > restart
the computer. After Windows has rebooted, return to the taskbar settings window and, in
Win 98, tick only 'Always on top' and 'Show clock' or, in XP, tick only 'Lock the taskbar',
'Keep the taskbar on top', 'Group similar taskbar buttons' and 'Show Quick Launch' > Apply
> OK > restart the computer again. With luck, you will now have your taskbar back
in place, with the new settings duly remembered. |
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| If that process fails to restore the taskbar, press Ctrl+Esc again to see if that is still only bringing up the Start menu. Assuming it is, press Esc to clear the Start menu, or click on the desktop. The taskbar may actually be there somewhere, just very hard to notice if it has floated away from its normal position, and been condensed in size. So scrutinise all round the whole of the desktop and all the edges of the screen very carefully to see if some small part of the taskbar is showing anywhere. |
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| If you cannot see any sign of any part of the taskbar, nor a miniaturised taskbar, change
your screen resolution temporarily to a wider resolution as this will help reveal a floating
taskbar if it has totally floated off the edge of the normal-sized screen. For example,
if you are currently on 800 x 600, change to 1024 x 768, or wider. To do that, right-click on the desktop > Properties > negotiate to the Display settings' window and then jack up the resolution slider at least one notch to the right. After changing to a wider res, look all round the edges of the desktop very carefully to see if the taskbar is now visible (be conscious that it had reduced in size, it will be even smaller at this wider resolution). If you still cannot see anything that might be the taskbar, it is always possible it has been collapsed down to nothing along the bottom edge of the screen. Slide your mouse all the way down so the cursor is trying to disappear off the bottom edge of the desktop. If the cursor changes to a double-headed arrow, left-click the mouse, drag upwards and the taskbar would then reappear. If you do not get a double-headed arrow at the bottom edge, repeat the same process against both sides of the screen, and the top edge of the screen. |
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| If any of the above tests, including Ctrl+Esc, did reveal the taskbar, but the bar is not
properly proportioned and needs resizing, left-click on the taskbar > press Alt+Space Bar
> from the menu which pops up, choose Size > resize the taskbar using the keyboard's arrow
keys. |
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| If none of the above steps has succeeded in bringing the taskbar back into view, not even
a displaced or shrunken taskbar, put your screen resolution back to your preferred size, and
continue to step 2 next. |
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| 2. Recover a missing Taskbar by booting to Safe Mode |
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| Booting a computer into Safe Mode, and straight back, may be able to restore a hidden taskbar automatically to its default size and location. This is because, when Windows Explorer starts in Safe Mode, it automatically returns some of its Start menu and Taskbar settings back to their heritage defaults, making the taskbar visible in Safe Mode, and retaining that regained visibility when you return to normal mode. |
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| If you do not know how to boot into Safe Mode, you will find a link at the bottom of this
article to a page covering Safe Mode. |
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| 3. Recover a missing Taskbar by editing the Registry |
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| If booting the PC into Safe Mode also failed to sort out the taskbar settings, it is time
to try the official fix from Microsoft's online Knowledge Base. This involves deleting
a single key in the Registry which may have become corrupted. Do not be afraid of venturing into the Registry - but you do so entirely at your own risk. If it is your first time ever, we suggest you follow the link at the end of this article called 'Registry for beginners', and take the relevant bits on that page to heart before you open the Registry Editor tool. |
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To find the required Registry key, open Regedit and navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Software\ Microsoft\
Windows\ CurrentVersion\ Explorer\ StuckRects |
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| Right-click on the subkey named StuckRects (denoted by a yellow folder) or StuckRects2 in
the case of XP > Delete. When you restart Windows, the deleted key should be regenerated and, with luck, will bring back a healthy taskbar with it. |
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| If the 'Stuckrects' key was missing, double-check that you have navigated down the correct registry tree as it's easy to get lost if you're not used to the registry - the full path of wherever you currently are in the registry is displayed in the Status Bar along the bottom of Regedit's window. If the subkey is definitely missing, then the taskbar problem is almost certainly associated with that absence. To remedy the situation, you will probably have to move on to step 4. However, before that, if you have access to somebody else's computer using an identical Windows' version to yours, you could Export (copy) the StuckRects subkey from the other computer's registry and Import it to the registry on your own computer. Reboot the computer and see what happens. If no fix, it's definitely on to the next step 4. |
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| 4. Recover a missing Taskbar by replacing the Registry |
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| If step 3, i.e. deleting and recreating the single registry key called StuckRects, failed
to restore the taskbar, the next option is to try replacing the whole Registry with the latest-available backup copy made when the taskbar was still working properly. This can be by any of the following three means, whichever is available to you, if any. If none prove available, you will have to go on to step 5. The three options are (i) one of the five automatic backups that Windows keeps (this option is not available if you have rebooted the computer five or more times since the taskbar first disappeared) or (ii) a backup you recently made yourself using MS Backup or, ideally, and best of all, (iii) a backup you recently made using either of the third-party primary lifesaver tools WinRescue or ERUNT.
Cont/. in RH col. |
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| Fig. 1 (below) We all take the Windows taskbar and Start
button for granted. But what would you do if they suddenly went missing as in the screengrab below? This has been known to happen! |
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| Fig. 2 (below) With help from our article left, a missing task bar will, eventually,
be back in its rightful place... |
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| Step 4 cont/. from LH column |
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| Assuming one or other of the above three backup alternatives is available to you, proceed
to replace the corrupt registry with the backup copy. However, if the automatic backups
are all too recent to be of any use, and you have not been making any manual backups of the
registry, go to step 5. |
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| 5. Recover a missing Taskbar using a drive image |
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| If you have made a drive-image backup of your C: partition fairly recently, at a time when
everything was perfectly normal, you have the ultimate option of restoring that image.
That would return your system to exactly as it was at the time you made the image, complete
with, thankfully, the missing or malfunctioning taskbar. |
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| You will only have a drive-image if you have been making periodic backups of your system
with a utility for that purpose. Four well-known examples being Paragon Drive Backup,
Norton Ghost, the former PowerQuest's Drive Image, or Acronis True Image. Each does a
similar job and is the ultimate lifesaver tool for users of Windows. |
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| If this option is available to you, well done. But remember, before restoring an entire imaged C: partition, any data files you have created or changed on that partition since making the image, including photos, music, letters, accounts, saved e-mails, Address Book changes and so on, will all be over-written and lost. So, back up all such data to either a separate partition which is not included in the image, an external drive, or removable media, first, so you won't lose it. |
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| If the option of restoring a drive-image was not available to you either, there are two
final options. You may have acquired a malicious infection without actually realising
it - in which case take a look at step 8 even if you didn't think, at first, that it applied
to you. If you are certain infection could not be the cause, go to step 9. |
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| 6. Missing buttons or hollow buttons on the taskbar |
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| Occasionally, people find they have not lost the entire taskbar, just the buttons which
would normally appear on it when they have opened applications like Notepad or Paint etc. Or the button shapes may be there but with no labels on them. |
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| If this has started happening after being infected with, or trying to remove a trojan or
the like, then go to step 8. However, this kind of sudden misbehaviour may occur merely
because of something unusual which somebody has recently done on the computer. For example, if somebody sometimes uses the computer to install games, use chat rooms, install widgets or other dubious stuff, that is the kind of thing which might have unexpectedly fouled up. Fortunately, it's a very rare occurrence for which no particular culprit has been identified. All you can do is have a look in Add/Remove Programs for any inessential applications which have only recently been installed, whether by yourself or others. That would be the most likely offender. Try uninstalling the suspicious app(s) and rebooting the computer. |
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| Uninstalling something might not fix the taskbar, even if the program concerned was actually
responsible for the broken taskbar. That is because programs cannot reverse or remove
all the changes they make to the registry or Windows during the time they have been in use.
Do not resort to trying a Registry Cleaner tool in the hope it might finish the job. A
cleaner might well remove some leftovers after an uninstall but there is no way it could make
good a damaged registry. |
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| If uninstalling any suspicious sounding programs did not fix the taskbar problem, and steps
4 and/or 5 were not available to you, go to step 8 and/or 9 |
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| 7. Taskbar is double-height from normal |
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| Normally, if a taskbar is twice as high as it should be, the fix is usually just a case
of hovering the mouse over the top edge of the taskbar until the cursor changes to a vertical
double-headed arrow, holding down the left mouse button and dragging the taskbar down to its
normal single-row height. |
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| Occasionally, however, some people find the taskbar will stubbornly refuse to go back down.
This situation is often related to the presence of the Windows' Quick Launch toolbar on the
taskbar. We have a detailed fix for that problem on our page on Quick Launch toolbar problems.
To go directly there, click this link for the double-height
fix. |
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| 8. Recover a Taskbar if erased or damaged by malware |
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| A valued reader, as at February 2008, lost the taskbar as a result of acquiring a spyware
trojan (Vundo). We searched the internet forums and found other victims had also suffered
loss of or serious damage to the taskbar because of Vundo. |
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| We suspect this is an unintended side-effect as trojans are meant to do their dirty deeds
without drawing attention to themselves in such an obvious way. Fortunately, there are
free removal tools available at well-known anti-virus sites like www.symantec.com, for many
named trojans, including Vundo, so your first step is probably to find one and see if it does
the trick. Success is not guaranteed, however, as removal tools that were once effective
can themselves be defeated by subsequent variants or mutations of the original trojan.
Our reader found her successful fix for vundo.akf at www.atribune.org and we are obliged for
the feedback. |
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| If, in your own case, you are successful in removing an infection and getting your taskbar
back, that will be great - but only as far as it goes. If one piece of dangerous malware
was able to get onto your machine then it is quite likely others did too - and they will not
be making the same mistake of drawing your attention to the fact as obviously. So you
may need to follow that up. |
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| If you could not successfully remove Vundo, or whatever other nasty might have caused your
taskbar troubles, then step 9 is the last remaining option on this particular page which offers
you any salvation. |
| 9. Recover a missing Taskbar by reinstalling Windows |
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| If you are still with us, and the preceding fixes that were available to you unfortunately
did not have a successful outcome, then we fear you may be faced with the painful prospect of
formatting the C: drive and reinstalling Windows, and everything else, from scratch. This
should be seen as a drastic last resort. If it is something you have never done before,
we would advise you to put the job in the hands of a nerdy friend or the shop where you bought
the computer. |
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We have now completely exhausted all the solutions we know of, so all we can hope now is
that, somewhere on this comprehensive page, you will have found just the guidance you required.
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