This probbly sounds pretty dumb, but I’ll be darned if I can figure out what is going on.
When I open programs they don’t show up in the taskbar. If I Minimize then they are still open, but theres no taskbar icon for it. If I want to bring it back up, I hit Alt-Tab… and it comes right back. But WTF is up with the task bar? I can’t seem to figure it out… I’ve been looking under google and the microsoft KB for a little while now…
Windows ME computer, btw… Any ideas? (It’s not a taskbar setting… I’ve checked in the task bar properties… )
Can you see the taskbar at all? IOW, is there a blank gray bar at the bottom of the screen, about a centimeter tall, or is it a tiny sliver? If it’s a tiny sliver, you just have to make it larger. Hold your mouse over the tiny bar, and when you get the resize cursor drag up to make it bigger.
hehe… yes I can see the taskbar. I can make it big and small… move it all around the screen. PLay with my time, add tool bars… anything I want to do with it.
Anyway, like I said, its not a taskbar setting… its just not displaying programs on it like its supposed to.
I’m hesitant to do a dirty install for this. (Although if push comes to shove, I would rather do a clean install… I keep myself backed up, I just don’t want to spend the time if I don’t have to. And it seems like I’m completely overlooking something here, but I don’t know what it is.)
Does anything show up at all, or is it just the programs that don’t show up? Did your …startmenu/programs or programfiles folder name get changed or something along those lines where the computer just can’t find them anymore? You might want to hunt down some of the start menu links on the computer and make sure no file/folder names got changed.
None of the folder names are the same. Everything on the taskbar looks normal… I tell you what. Close all programs on your computer, and look down at your task bar. That is what I see. A normal task bar w/no programs listed in there. Open up a program, the task bar looks not one wit different.
None of the folders or anything in the StartMenu folder are changed, nothing of note is really different. Thats what makes me so confused. It must be something I’ll have to reinstall for… There has got to be a registry setting that got altered somehow, but I have no idea how or which one.
Thanks everybody… I’m still open to more suggestions… this is more of a challenge at this point than anything. I’m sure there is something that somebody is going to know that I have just overlooked.
I’m not familiar with WinME, and can’t for the life of me remember how it worked in Win98, but there are really 4 areas on the taskbar. First, the Start button. Second, the Quick Launch area (little icons). Third, the area that shows running tasks. Fourth, the system tray (clock, etc.). You can enlarge or reduce the Quick Launch area by clicking and dragging its right edge. Now, in WinXP, it won’t let you make that area so large that it completely hides the area that shows the running tasks, but maybe in WinME, it will let you do so. So, you’d end up with no space to show any running tasks. This is, of course, all just a WAG, as I’ve never seen this symptom before!
You’re saying that the programs don’t show up down in the tray? Like, when you’re here in this thread, you don’t see a folder down in the tray that says, “Straigh…”?
IANA computer geek, but I’d guess that’s something wrong with Systray.
Go to Start, Run, type in “msconfig” in the box, and a whole slew of menus comes up. Go to Startup–that’s the list of programs that load automatically when you turn on the computer. System Tray ought to be selected.
NOTE: be very, very, VERY cautious when deleting things from Startup. Like, if you see something and you think, “What’s that doing there?” and you unclick it, it may mean that your computer won’t go at all. So don’t go hog-wild and start unclicking, thinking you’re speeding up your computer.
I don’t know how to solve this, but I too am having the same exact program. Didn’t happen until after I installed XP and AOL 8.0 . I thought it might have had something to do with one or the other of them. Interesting note, though, while none of the programs I open show up on the task bar, pop up ads do. I would be grateful if someone could provide a way to fix this.
DDG… the systray setting in msconfig actually controls the volume control icon down by the clock. (If you uncheck it, the volume control icon should disappear down there.)
Early and Urban… The quicklaunch bar is its normal size. One of the first things I did was make the taskbar about half the screen, just to make sure they weren’t hiding on me. All the toolbars I can add to the taskbar like normal and alter their contents.
xjetgirl— I have a popup killer, so I have no idea of pop-up ads show up or not… but I can check.
(This is also somewhat of a bump for anybody who may not have seen it yet. )
In XP, there is a ToolBar. There are types of ToolBars, there is a Quick Launch ToolBar, Desktop, Link & Address ToolBars. You have to choose which one you want to show up. There is also a TaskBar.
Try booting Windows in Safe Mode and see if the problem’s still there. If not, run MSConfig and check the startup tab for any suspicious programs.
Apparently a program named pmedia and/or an executable named OTMS.exe can cause this behavior, so check your system for those.
Quite a few people are reporting this problem, so it could be related to a single, popular program with shoddy coding. Installed any P2P apps or online games lately?
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