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The task bar on my windows XP machine has become hidden, how do I get it back?

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Summary: The task bar can appear hidden if it's configured to auto-hide, or if the size has been configured to be too small.

The task bar on my windows XP machine has become hidden, how do I get it back?

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The taskbar is very configurable as I discussed in a previous article: My TaskBar is too small to be useful, what can I do?, and the accompanying video out at Lockergnome. You might want to review that to see if perhaps it got configured to auto-hide or have zero size.

CTRL+ESC will always bring up the start menu. On that you might also check Settings, Taskbar and Start Menu, and make sure that Auto-hide is turned off and the taskbar is unlocked.

Then if the size did in fact get set to zero height then you may see a small, thin bar where your task bar used to be. You should be able to click, hold, and drag that up to make it bigger.

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Article C1977 - June 2, 2004

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Recent Comments
93 Comments

I have lost my task bar on my windows XP. I followed your instructions and depressed Escape and Control and brought up the settings, control panel. I opened up the task bar. It is not on auto hide and I do not have a thin line on my screen that I can stretch. It is also on unlock.Any other suggestions?

Posted by: aparajita at September 25, 2009 10:07 PM

I have always had my taskbar in the auto hide mode so that it stays out of the way when I do things. Recently though, when I have a window open, internet, word or anything else the taskbar will not come back up unless I minimize the window first. Can you help please. Thank you.

You can try the "keep on top of other windows" option in the task bar settings, but that can also fail. To be honest, I just hit the Windows key on my keyboard when this happens and the taskbar pops up.
Leo
01-Jan-2010

Posted by: Rick Myers at December 31, 2009 3:38 PM

I have my task bar window turned to vertical side of the desktop. How can i turn it back to horizontal default?
Thank you.

That's this article: How do I move my Windows XP taskbar back to the bottom of the screen? (Video)
Leo
14-Jan-2010

Posted by: Alhassan at January 13, 2010 6:25 AM

Same problem....I had to bring up the task bar-new task-msconfig. I was on selective startup and the boxies for win.ini and system.ini were unchecked, rechecked and restart and start bar is back. I was doing some start up troubleshooting but I did not uncheck those boxes???? Hope this works for anyone else!

Posted by: jeff at February 25, 2010 4:35 PM

Mmmm...My problem is my task bar is gone...and Ill need my microsoft wod badly..so please help me out..

Posted by: fadegear at March 9, 2010 3:44 AM
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