VeeshanVault

Okay, I haven't had a chance to look at the computer yet, but my friend is having some problems. She said that her start menu and bottom taskbar have disappeared, she doubleclicks on McAfee or Norton or whatever she has to try and diagnose the problem and nothing happens. I'm assuming there's a problem with Windows Explorer (or that she got a virus), anyone have any good recommendations on a first thing to check out?

Right now I'm thinking I'll just wipe it and reinstall windows, but if anyone has a less-intrusive idea, I'm all ears.

Tell her to move her mouse pointer to the botton of the screen... when it turns into a vertical doublesided arrow she should click and hold the left mouse button and drag the pointer up.

If explorer was crashing or not running, she wouldn't even be able to see the icons on her desktop to double click them. The desktop is an integrated part of the windows shell.

99% of the time when someone cant see their start button, the bar is just hidden at the edge of the screen.

I'm pretty sure she's smarter than that and it's a legitimate problem, but I'll verify.

Her initial description of the problem was

My computer is F’ed up. My bottom bar is not showing, Start menu gone, and I can’t open McAfee to try and fix the problem. I double click and nothing happens. Usually I can fix this stuff, but I don’t know what to do? Do I take my computer somewhere? I’m so sad. I love my computer. It’s like losing a pet.

Have her bring up the task manager and see if explorer.exe is runnung under processes.

If it is, have her hold down the windows key and hit E.
If an explorer window opens up, her computer is fine.

Does anyone else have access to her comp? If they do check and make sure they didn't take a photo of her desktop and then past it as the background and then remove all her icons and lock the bar down.

That's a pretty funny prank that I've played on someone before, but I believe this is primarily her home machine so I don't think anyone did that.

Thanks for the ideas so far, a couple things I wouldn't have considered checking before I wipe it.

So what was the problem?

Perhaps it was moved to the sides or the top and then shrunk as well.

miir wrote:So what was the problem?

Still not sure. The problem happened through several reboots, and then just quit happening. I took a look through event viewer, did full virus and spyware scans and cleans, nothing looked odd. I have no idea what the problem was, but I didn't end up doing much of anything.

I'm going to take another look at it if it happens again.

Sounds like she just wanted you over for your company!

*hears porno music* mmmmmmmmmm sylvus

Sylvus wrote:

miir wrote:So what was the problem?

Still not sure. The problem happened through several reboots, and then just quit happening. I took a look through event viewer, did full virus and spyware scans and cleans, nothing looked odd. I have no idea what the problem was, but I didn't end up doing much of anything.

I'm going to take another look at it if it happens again.

I've seen that happen before. Explorer just doesn't run/hangs/etc and you lose the UI. A reboot, or two, or three, or five fixes it, or you kill the Explorer process and run a new one from the task manager, etc.

Seems to be impossible to fix w/o a reinstall of the OS, and usually an indication you need one anyway.