Lost your Windows XP taskbar and desktop icons?

A program called explorer.exe controls the display of your taskbar and desktop icons. If for some reason it goes missing (you may have killed it using Task Manager, for example, or something more sinister like a virus has deleted it from your processes), then try this first:

1. Open Task Manager (press Ctrl+Alt+Del, then click Task Manager).
2. On the Applications tab, click New Task at the bottom right of the window.
3. Type explorer.exe, then click OK.

If nothing sinister caused it to disappear, it should all come back as it was and you can stop panicking, breathe a sigh of relief, and continue working.

Update: 11 June 2008: I’ve found that sometimes SnagIt causes my taskbar to disappear. I’ve noticed it when I have a lot of Windows open and am trying to do a capture and SnagIt gets ‘hung’. Using Task Manager to shut down SnagIt and restart it often brings my taskbar back. Of course, if you don’t have SnagIt installed then that won’t solve your problem!

Update: 8 August 2008: This still occurs with SnagIt 9… I had thought that maybe they might have fixed it.

Update: 18 August 2008: I contacted SnagIt’s Technical Support a week or so ago, and got this suggested solution back from them. I haven’t tried it yet.

Disable the SnagIt shell extension to see if this helps:

1. Close all open programs.
2. Go to Start > Control Panel > Add or Remove Programs.
3. Locate SnagIt in the list and click the Change button.
4. Choose Modify and click Next.
5. Click the drop-down arrow next to Windows Explorer Menu Extension, then select Entire feature will be unavailable.
6. Click Next, then complete the wizard.