Question

xp service pack 2 is installed.
everything was working fine.
installed world of warcraft, things were fine.
installed nvidia gforce2 mx400 graphics card, lost taskbar and systray, start menu, and clock. installed the drivers for the card and still no task bar. pressing windows key or ctrl esc does not bring up the start menu, however, pressing up and enter brings up shutdown menu, so it is still there, just 'invisible'. Tried booting in safe mode, shows up there, rebooted and does not show up still.

looked in the registry and noticed there is nothing for taskbar or systray in the windows\currentversion\run portion, my 98 machine has entries, not sure if there is a difference between 98 and xp or what.

im fresh out of ideas, please help

Answer

From the sounds of it we would assume that your resolution is set to high or the taskbar is hidden. Generally the best way to resolve this issue is to boot into safe mode.

Once in safe mode you can first try restarting the computer. If the taskbar was hidden often it will be visible again after booting into safe mode. If this does not resolve your issue or you do not believe this is the issue we suggest adjusting your display properties. This can be done by opening the control panel and opening the Display icon. Within display click the Settings tab and decrease your resolution size.

Additional information about booting into safe mode can be found on the below page.

http://www.computerhope.com/issues/chsafe.htm

Finally, if the above recommendations do not resolve your issue you may want to boot back into safe mode and open device manager. Within device manager remove the display adapter and your monitor and let Windows reinstall each of the drivers again after rebooting the computer back into Normal mode.

Additional information about device manager can be found on the below page.

http://www.computerhope.com/win95er.htm