- Jun 24, 2001
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I'm looking at someone's old IBM Thinkpad and it's having a very strange problem with XP. There are no taskbar buttons for open/running tasks. It turns out that the bar including the Start button itself only shows and works when a toolbar is enabled. The default user account had the Language toolbar and nothing else (no sizing handle). The Start menu worked when clicked or when pressing CTRL+ESC (no Win key on a Thinkpad) until the Language bar was disabled and the system restarted. Now, even the Start button is gone. There is a thin gray line that still auto-hides according to the user's settings (the unused Administrator account never used autohide). I get sizing handle cursors and context menus when I click it, so it is not locked up. Killing Explorer and re-launching it does not fix it.
If the user account had a toolbar enabled, it will at least have access to the Start button, which is important on a system with no Windows key. When you disable all toolbars and restart, you can't even use CTRL+ESC for Start menu access.
When you disable toolbars on an account that had them enabled manually or using the Show NoToolbarsOnTaskbar 0x1 in HKCU/SFTWR/MS/Win/Policies, it takes out the Start menu with it.
If the user account had a toolbar enabled, it will at least have access to the Start button, which is important on a system with no Windows key. When you disable all toolbars and restart, you can't even use CTRL+ESC for Start menu access.
When you disable toolbars on an account that had them enabled manually or using the Show NoToolbarsOnTaskbar 0x1 in HKCU/SFTWR/MS/Win/Policies, it takes out the Start menu with it.