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

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I have a big problem. When I boot my PC, no taskbar appears. When I press Ctrl+Alt+Del and run a new task "explorer", the desktop and all the icons appear for 3-5 seconds and then the explorer process ends and everything disappears. This happens every time I run explorer.exe Without it, I can't do many things... I also noticed a svchost error message appearing sometimes. I have checked my PC with NOD antivirus. A few viruses/trojans were discovered and succesfuly deleted. I have also used SpyBot Search and Destroy to remove spyware. But this hasn't helped at all :( I have read that updating my WinXP is also recommended, but I have no idea how to update without the explorer.exe process running. I have WinXP Pro with SP2 installed. I want to avoid reinstalling it as it takes a lot of work and I do not have the install CD. What should I do? Please, help me

IMPORTANT: If you encounter this problem, and it still shows after a restart you may have to End Task the explorer.exe, then New Task (Run) Explorer. It seem that sometimes the file is running, but errors. I noticed that some people mentioned trying it, but they did not make sure the old process was stopped before trying to start it again. If you don't end the old process, a new one will not start, or will start with the same error.

If you have lost your taskbar, shut down your computer and restart. There is a good chance it will come back.

I haven't read where anyone has tried system restore on the missing task bar. I can't say that this will work, but it's worth a try. Make sure you oare in safe mode. Otherwise, not all things may be restored.

To the person that has lost their printer icon. Have you tried, start, programs, my compouter, printers and fax, view my printer. When the printer icon appears, drag it to the desktop.

I made a mirror image from C: to D: (as C: is a 40gb HD and D: is a 320Gb HD)

The original works fine (used to work fine as I already formatted that HD), the mirror has the problem: no taskbar, start menu, explorer.exe running.

I tried the SFC, BUT I get error message on cmd window.

On an older computer with W98SE, this "file, new, run" fix isn't available. But I was able to fix the problem by minimizing an open window and watching the direction it moves in as it minimizes. I dragged the cursor over to that side and sure enough the task bar reappeared and could be repositioned at the bottom. Phew!

i tried everything but did not work out..the windows key is also disabled! pliz find me another solution!!

my TASKBAR AND START MENU ISN'T COMIN UP BUT ALL THA IS COMIN UP WHEN I PRESS CTRL-ALT-DEL TYPE 'explorer' and all that comes up is my documents

The end eplorer.exe task then run new task explorer.exe worked for me. Thanks

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