No Taskbar

[JCO]

Trying to help my mother in-law, over the phone. Yeah yeah, this is not
going to be easy.

Her Taskbar is gone. I walked her through several options, but we can't
seem to find it. According to her, it does not seem to be at the bottom of
the screen at all therefore, we can't drag the bar to stretch it back to
normal shape. I'm sure the taskbar property is locked, because I did that
myself over Christmas break.

I had her hit the windows key and nothing comes up at all. So I don't think
it's the a setting on the monitor (stretching or shrinking the desktop).

We managed to get the windows explorer on her desktop (via desktop
properties). This allows us to get to the control panel. This allows us to
select "Appearance and Themes". At the bottom of this screen you can bring
up the properties of the task bar, but it does not work. She says the
properties of the taskbar does not display anything.

So I'm at a loss. I loaded Windows XP Pro on her system a few weeks ago
while they were visiting my family. Every since she got the computer home,
she has not had a taskbar. Therefore, a restore point wont help us either.

Any suggestions?
Thanks

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Trying to help my mother in-law, over the phone. Yeah yeah, this is
not going to be easy.

Her Taskbar is gone. I walked her through several options, but we
can't seem to find it.

It would be easier to try to help if you had told us what you tried, but
first check to make sure it hasn't been shrunk to zero lines high. Move the
mouse cursor to the very bottom of the screen and wiggle it slightly up and
down, trying to turn it into a two-headed arrow. If it does, click and drag
that top border up to make it the size you want.

If that doesn't work, it may have also been moved to another side of the
screen. Try the same on the other three sides.

Finally, if none of those work, go to
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_abc.htm, click T, then under Taskbar,
click Taskbar is Missing.