No XP taskbar or Start menu with toolbars disabled; no task buttons regardless; fix?

CZroe

Lifer
Jun 24, 2001
24,195
857
126
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.
 

CZroe

Lifer
Jun 24, 2001
24,195
857
126
I've seen this same problem on other IBM/Lenovo's, and found this little tool from Kellys-Korner: Taskbar Repair Tool Plus!

Thanks. When searching, I saw references to it being just an automated way to do NoToolbarsOnTaskbar without manual registry editing but it looks like a lot more when I look at it myself.

Hmm... but I it seems that I can't get the notebook online to download that. Strange. IPCONFIG and Device Manager show a network adapter but there are no connections in the Network Connections control panel. Similarly, all audio drivers are installed but I just get system beeps. I guess I need to reinstall Windows even if I can fix the taskbar. Strange, because it seems like a very fresh installation with SP3.
 

Bubbaleone

Golden Member
Nov 20, 2011
1,803
4
76
If the hidden recovery partition is still intact you can do a factory restore by rebooting and pressing the blue Access IBM button (top of the keyboard) on start-up.

This puts the laptop into the IBM Recover/Restore mode. It will prompt for any file backups you want. Also save the IBM Access Connections profile so you can restore wireless.
 

Ichinisan

Lifer
Oct 9, 2002
28,298
1,235
136
Thanks. When searching, I saw references to it being just an automated way to do NoToolbarsOnTaskbar without manual registry editing but it looks like a lot more when I look at it myself.

Hmm... but I it seems that I can't get the notebook online to download that. Strange. IPCONFIG and Device Manager show a network adapter but there are no connections in the Network Connections control panel. Similarly, all audio drivers are installed but I just get system beeps. I guess I need to reinstall Windows even if I can fix the taskbar. Strange, because it seems like a very fresh installation with SP3.

Start > Run > services.msc

Make sure the Network Connections service is running.