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The mystery of the disappearing Taskbar.


Once in a while, Windows gets into a terrible state and the Taskbar and its Start menu disappear. This is because the software that manages these, called the Windows Explorer shell, has crashed. To deal with this, without logging off and on the computer, you have to end any existing sessions of Explorer and run a new one.

To end existing Explorer sessions hold down the Ctrl and Alt keys and press the Delete key. On some versions of Windows this will open up the ‘Windows Security’ dialog box, if so then press the ‘Task Manager’ button; on other versions you will be taken straight to the ‘Task Manager’ program.

To stop the Explorer shell, go to the ‘Processes’ page and look for ‘explorer.exe’. You can sort the processes into alphabetical order by clicking on the Image Name heading. If you find an entry for ‘explorer.exe’, highlight it and click the End Process button and click Yes on the warning dialog. If you don’t find an entry for it you can go straight to the next step.

To restart the Explorer shell, click on the ‘File’ menu in Task Manager and select ‘New Task (Run…)’. This will open the Run dialog box, into which you can type ‘explorer’ and click OK. The Taskbar should now reappear.


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10 comments.
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Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com Chris
#1. February 8th, 2008, at 3:58 PM.

How do you keep this from happening? Its a daily occurrence for me.

Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com Garth
#2. March 1st, 2008, at 7:54 PM.

Me too! Quite frustrating. Surely this has to be happening on a LOT of other systems. MS ought to sit up and take notice.

g

Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com Cheyne
#3. May 7th, 2008, at 1:41 PM.

This happens to me several times a day on a Dell Vostro 1700. Every time I unplug my dual monitor to go to meetings the taskbar dissapears. Something as fundemental as this should have been fixed BEFORE the Vista release, much less a year after!

Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com Charlie
#4. June 20th, 2008, at 8:06 PM.

I just type “ta” into Visa Start (for me this does not dissapear) then click on “Taskbar and Start Menu” then Auto-hide, apply : then Auto-hide, apply. Now the task bar is back. Still a big nuisance though!
Just fix it! PS> This never happened the first 9 months of me having Vista. I suspect it arrived with an “update”.

Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com dave
#5. November 9th, 2008, at 8:10 PM.

thanks.

Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com Jen
#6. February 11th, 2009, at 4:31 PM.

Did not help AT ALL!!

Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com James
#7. March 22nd, 2009, at 10:53 PM.

Hey, great help! Saves me a restart!

Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com Simba
#8. April 26th, 2009, at 4:44 PM.

like charlie said I just type “ta” into Visa Start (for me this does not dissapear) then click on “Taskbar and Start Menu” then tick “keep taskbar on top of other windows” and apply that should work

i suspect it came with an update

Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com Ronnie
#9. May 27th, 2009, at 2:10 PM.

you can also just set your screen saver to come on in the minimum amount of time (1 minute), wait for it to come on, and then shake the mouse or touch the pad, and BAM the vanishing bar is back, discovered this little trick by accident, and at least it only takes one minute of doing NOTHING to get it back…. sure beats a restart, or going in and clicking a bunch of crap.

Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com chris
#10. June 2nd, 2009, at 7:01 PM.

Hover over the top toolbar to bring it up….
Click on tools and deselect fullscreen…
Don’t know why mine ended up like this but this cured the toolbar and disappearing taskbar.
You may also need to temporarily unlock the toolbar if things need rearranging up there

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