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Windows 7 TASKBAR missing.

Anonymous
2010-09-17T18:18:23+00:00

After running Windows 7 for 6 months, decided I wanted my taskbar on the right instead of the left, but when I dragged the TASKBAR from the left side to the right side of the display, the taskbar vanished. I've tried re-booting (by pressing the power button on the PC). And the taskbar is still missing.

I tried a right mouse ... Personalize... and selected TASKBAR and START MENU to move the taskbar to the left side, but the taskbar is missing.  Also now when I do a right mouse on the desktop... then select Personalize... then select TASKBAR and START MENU... the task bar dialog does not appear.  

To summarize... all I did to get into this mess was drag the TASKBAR from the left to the right side of the screen and the TASKBAR vanished.

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Accessibility

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Anonymous
2010-09-17T23:10:20+00:00

Hi

Have you ever had multiple monitors set up on that computer? It sounds like the Taskbar may have been moved to a monitor that is no longer connected.

Right click an empty spot on the Desktop and select Screen Resolution.

If you see the Multiple Displays  options there, select the drop down menu and click the Show Desktop only on 1  option. Click  Apply/OK.

Let us know the results.

Thank You for using Windows 7

Ronnie Vernon MVP

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  1. Anonymous
    2012-10-31T06:03:04+00:00

    1.  Takbar has ben reduced to zero height - hover mouse at bottom of the screen and when arrow appears re-expand it.

    1. Taskbar and your desktop are both missing - Windows Explorer (Explorer not Internet Explorer) has crashed and you can type Control+alt+delete and select run the Task Manager and then File - New Task (run) - and type explorer.exe in the run box. 
    2. If your desktop is not missing but your taskbar is, the Windows Explorer process may have partially crashed.  Open task manager and kill the explorer.exe process.  Then follow instructions above to re-run it.

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-02-17T08:20:41+00:00

    I know this is a late response, but I solved this issue a number of times by re-initializing explorer in the task manager.

    1. Press Ctrl-Alt-Del and select Start Task Manager.
    2. At the bottom, click New Task...
    3. Enter "explorer" (without quotes) and click OK.

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  3. Anonymous
    2010-09-30T00:09:12+00:00

    I have not had multiple displays hooked up to my computer. The taskbar just disappers after using windows explorer.

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  4. Anonymous
    2010-09-30T05:31:05+00:00

    Ok, I looked at this, and I've got an answer.

    1. Go to my computer. If you can't cause you don't have a start bar, internet explorer will do
    2. type C:\Windows\System32
    3. press enter

    NOTE: An alternate to the above method is to right click your desktop, create a short cut with 'control panel' as the 'location', then open the file location, then running it. Ignore this if it makes no sense ^_^

    1. Look for a little icon called control
    2. open it- it will take you  to the control pannel
    3. type in 'start bar' and click on the 'taskbar and start menu' thing. It should be in green
    4. Make sure the task bar isn't locked, disable auto hide and disable 'use small icon'. Also, there is a drop down menu under those, change it to bottom.
    5. press apply, and see if it came back

    let me know how you go ^_^

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