The mystery of the missing Taskbar

[MattyB]

Does anyone else have this issue with Windows 7? When I resume windows after it has been sleeping for a period of time, I lose the taskbar at the bottom of the screen. Only the Start button is there. This happens on my M11x, M18x, Aurora ALX and my girlfriends M14x. I find it pretty weird that it's happening to all of them. Surely it isn't just me........

It's a little annoying. Sometimes it will come back on it's own but usually I have to restart if I want it back. Obviously I can work around it but it's unsettling. There is no chance of me doing Windows re-installs on all these machines.

 

[yikes81]

Never happened to me. Sorry.

2

 

[AeonSoul]

Same here, never hard the problem.

But instead of restarting the pc, just restart explorer.exe from task manager (after you open it with CTRL+Shift+Esc, kill the explorer.exe process then goto File->Run and just type in explorer.exe)

 

[MattyB]

Same here, never hard the problem.

But instead of restarting the pc, just restart explorer.exe from task manager (after you open it with CTRL+Shift+Esc, kill the explorer.exe process then goto File->Run and just type in explorer.exe)

I'll give that a go next time. It doesn't explain what the hell is going on though. I'll google it tomorrow. Sleep time me thinks.

 

[yikes81]

Yeh, when you kill explorer.exe you get a 50/50 chance of it coming back. But windows is getting better with recovering from unexpected crashes.

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[MattyB]

I'm just going to re-hash this thread since I think I have discovered the issue. I think it's because I'm using a third party screensaver on all my machines. Apparently these can interfere with the Windows Power Management System. Just a note in case it's happening to anyone else. I blame you DDuB! Just kidding

 

[DDuB420]

That's the Downfall to 3rd party software sometimes. It's not always written the most most stable way it can.
Let me guess, alienware fire screensaver?

 

[MattyB]

You got it! It's a pity since I really like that one but every time I leave my machines for an hour or more with the screensaver going, I lose the taskbar and usually have to restart. I put it on my GF's M14x and it does it to her too. At least I worked out what it was before I started trying to reinstall Windows! That would have been a big waste of time!

 

[Maelstrom]

You know, I fiddled with the idea of having an animated screensaver, but I realized that the only time it would be playing is when no one is around to look at it...

 

[MattyB]

You know, I fiddled with the idea of having an animated screensaver, but I realized that the only time it would be playing is when no one is around to look at it...

Sounds like you need more people around!

But yeah, I understand what you mean. At the end of the day what does it really matter.

 

[adityadragoniyer]

I never had a screen saver since like ages! Almost forgot they exist lol Just made my screen turn off after being idle for some min.

 

[yikes81]

Yeh I do the same. I just make the screen turn off. Mostly because I wanted minimal system resources being used when idle.

 

[MattyB]

I even have it set to stay on when I close the lid. I like it to be 100% ready to go when I am.

 

[nE0n1nja]

I've had this same problem after I set the "Alienware all powerful" screen saver (the one with the flaming AW head). But I discovered that the taskbar disappears only if the screen gets turned off. If the screensaver is running and the display stays turned on, you can resume with no problems. So I set the "Turn the display off after..." option to never, and the taskbar doesn't disappear anymore.