My Taskbar is missing and I have no Start button - what do I do?

thx a lot
my problem solved and I don't know how to thank you

Ok, so earlier this week my open icons on my task bar when I rolled my mouse over them showed little boxes so I could get a quick visual glance at what was open in that program. About Wednesday, that changed on me and when I scroll over them, they just give a list of the open programs. I must have done some keyboard shortcut. How do I get the little pictures back? Thanks!

The Taskbar with the Start button might be hidden somewhere and you can't see it on your monitor. But if the Taskbar went missing due to virus infection, its difficult to restore it. The virus will also block upgrade installation to repair the Operating System. First preferred option would be to connect your hard drive to another computer as Slave Drive and scan it for virus infection. The final option is to format your hard drive containing the OS and re-install a fresh one. Never connect to the net or use removeable drives without installing a good antivirus or internet security. No point in taking risks.

Thanks a million!

Excellent, thanks very much. In my case, the explorer.exe process was still showing in Task Manager, but there must have been something wrong with it... so I used End Process to stop it, then your New Task tip to start "explorer", which worked perfectly. Thanks again.

thank you so much! I couldn't do anything without the start menu!

Great advice - used task manager to start explorer. Thanks

thank you so much kind sir I was so worried until I found this article had no idea haha

thanks a lot.....i am recover my start menu by using ur tips...actually my explorer was not working..i am useing ur step and goto task manager and started a new task by run command and type explorer...and my start menu was appear.......thanksssssss

My child pressed something and my taskbar is missing. I tried with your proposal above but to no avail.