Task Bar and Start Menu Fail to Respond

[Brad Grub]

The task bar and start menu have failed to respond on my
friend's computer, period. I noticed at first that it was
taking an unusual amount of time for them to become
available on boot-up, but they eventually would after
approximately 30-60 seconds. Now, they refuse to respond
no matter how long I allow them, only displaying the
hourglass when the mouse rolls over them. Everything else
seems to work fine. In a potentially related/unrelated
problem, the computer is also not detecting its connection
to the internet (see XP Not Detecting Connection in
Networking and Web Newsgroup). Any help in getting the
taskbar and start menu to work would be greatly
appreciated.

 

[R. McCarty]

Open the Microsoft Management Console and check the
System Events viewer. This sounds like services that are
failing to start or timing out. Sometimes a Service start will
hang and this prevents other dependant services from startup.
MMC can be accessed through Control Panel, Administrative
Tools, Event Viewer. (Red Icons denote errors).

Also try to login using another account (Administrator). It
could be profile specific and if things run properly in an
alternate account then you've got a starting point for running
down the cause.