I'm using Windows XP Home Edition SP2 and I recently lost my task bar and I don't know how or why. I can't get it back either, I can't even open up the task bar options in the control panel. I'm going crazy here and I really need some help.

And it's not hiding on the bottom of the screen, I'm no idiot.

Most likely you got a virus. Press ctrl+alt+del to open the task manager. Go to File -> New Task. Type in "explorer.exe" and click OK. You should have your task bar back.

I suspect you won't even be able to open the task manager...

Didn't work.

What didn't work? Can't open the Task Manager?

I could open it, but when I typed in explorer.exe and clicked OK, My Documents opened up and the icons that are on my desktop were in a column on the left, no task bar. I tried it several times, each with no luck. This is driving me mad.

Do you see any icons on your desktop?

Yes. All of the ones that are usually on there.

That's odd. If explorer was terminated, not only would the task bar be gone but also everything on the desktop. What happened prior to the task bar disappearing?


Did you try restarting the computer?

I tried restarting a few times. I bought a graphics card and installed it, I didn't like it because I was having too many technical issues with it (what do you expect from ATI?) removed the ATI drivers, reinstalled the old video drivers and my old video card and when I restarted my PC the only icon I had on my desktop was my Firefox. No recycle bin, (couldn't find the damn thing ANYWHERE!), no my computer, no IE, nothing but the one icon. So I just decided to live with it and today my screen flashed when I closed a program, then all of my missing icons came back but the task bar disappeared. I don't know what a graphics card could have to do with this but that's when all this crazy sh...stuff started happening.

Try installing the drivers again. First, you must uninstall the drivers.

Go to "New Task" in the Task Manager again and type in:
control appwiz.cpl

That will bring you directly to the Add or Remove Programs wizard since you can't get there via the Start menu...


Remove everything relating to both card manufactuers (ATI and NVIDIA I assume). Restart the computer when prompted. When you have them both gone, go to New Task again and type in "C:\" to open up your hard drive. Delete any ATI/NVIDIA directories in here. Download and install the drivers for the card you currently have installed. Hopefully that will fix it.

If it doesn't, a system file is probably damaged. You'd have to either reinstall the OS or do a recovery console repair on the damaged files.

Just an obvious thought but still worth adding, have you tried safe mode?

F8 on boot up that should rule out any little low level viruses from starting no?

I tried everything, safe mode, searches, uninstalling/reinstalling the drivers, so I just gave up and did a full system restore 'cause I think I had a nasty virus. I can't see how a video card could rock my system the way it did so it must've been a virus. So now I'm having trouble finding the download for the Windows XP Home Edition SP2, my OS is the original XP. Can someone please add a direct link to the original SP2? All the dl's I'm finding are for driver issues with the SP2, not the service pack itself. Thanks for your help guys, I'm almost back to normal over here and will be as soon as I get the SP2 installed.

The only connection I can draw is that the ATI and NVIDIA drivers both modified explorer in some way in order to allow hardware transparency support. For some reason, something went wrong and corrupted explorer (perhaps a theme file too) which caused components to become completely transparent.

I'm pretty sure you can't upgrade directly to SP2...you have to do SP1a first. You can go from SP1a directly to SP3 however.

SP1a:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en...3443E29D78

SP2 (skip if you plan to go direct to SP3):
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=049C9...laylang=en

SP3:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=5b33b...layLang=en

Those updates will work for the home edition too? Because it says it's for the IT and professionals, isn't that XP Office? And it also says not to dl it if you plan on installing it on one computer.

They are the full redistributables that will work for Windows XP Home Edition. It's better to get updates from http://www.windowsupdate.com


Those downloads are offered to IT professionals that have to update many computers at a time so they don't have to download the files many times over.

Randy Murr said:


If it is same in safe mode, then nothing much you can do, either System Restore or Repair Install.

Well, I'm all back to normal over here, installed the SP2 and all is well. Thanks for all of your help FordGT90Concept, I appreciate it.

Over the top installation of Service Pack 2 replaces almost all DLL. EXE or SYS files, I'm surprised it worked for you, but Repair would've been sure shot resolution.