South West Bikers | Motorcycle Forum

think my comp is having a funny few weeks!
my newest problem..... occasionally when im looking on the net, the bit on the bottom of my screen which has all the tabs for what programmes im using, the start menu, clock etc etc dissapears! all of the icons on my desktop goes too, to do anything i have to open up the windows task manager and switch to the task i want which is a pain in the ass,i cant seem to get any of it back unless i restart the computer then its fine again until afte a while it all dissapears again! ay ideas?

Windows XP or Vista?

Either way.. If things disappear for some reason, it's because explorer.exe has crashed for some reason.

If this happens, go to Windows Task Manager and go to File > New Task (Run...) and type explorer.exe and it should bring everything back.

xp!ok mate nice one ill try it if it happens again,funnily enough since i asked the question it hasnt happned

well it happened again and i done what you said mate and it all came back, is there any reason its doing this though and anyway to cure it?

OK ... the thing that keeps appearing and disappearing is called the taskbar. You can lock it and tell it to stay on top of other windows. It sounds like one of those settings has unset itself. To check....

Click on the bottom left of the screen to get the start menu up.

Select "Control Panel"

Go into "Taskbar and Start Menu"

Check the settings ... I have a tick in the "lock the taskbar" and "Keep the taskbar on top of other windows" and I think you've probably got a tick missing (bit like having a screw loose ).

Hope that helps.

just checked that and it was already ticked,think ive just got a ghost in the house taking the piss out of me!!

Have you run a virus check?

watters wrote:just checked that and it was already ticked,think ive just got a ghost in the house taking the [wee] out of me!!

can you hear the voices too ??

How about ..... right click on the actual taskbar (when you can see it obviously!) ... select "Properties" ... then make sure there's NOT a tick in the box next to "Auto-hide the taskbar"

I expect there is something that is causing windows explorer to fail. There was a bug with MSN messenger when it was starting that was causing explorer.exe to crash.