I just installed my old GeForce4 card to get better resolution. Everything is working well and looking great. The problem? No start menu nor task bar! What the hell? I’m a reasonably smart puter guy, what the hell am I forgetting?!?
Try switching to a smaller resolution and see if it comes back.
Mouse all the way down to the bottom of your screen and see if a double arrow pops up. If so use it to drag the bottom task bar up back up . You can also lock it so it doesn’t disappear.
If it’s resolution /screen geometry mismatch change to a higher resolution and play with monitor screen size and card resol/refresh rate until the bar is visible at the resolution and refresh rate desired.
Do you normally keep icons on your Desktop, and, if so, are they where you’d expect them to be?
If not: perhaps your OS thinks you have multiple displays and is treating this one as other than the primary?
Did you leave in the other display card when you installed this GeForce4?
All the icons are on the desktop. I had to leave the original card in. It’s a Compaq box that has the setup where the factory card is hard wired in. The Nvidia is in an expansion slot.
The menu isn’t hidden off-screen. I’ll try the resolution thing and see what happens. FWIW, if I connect the monitor to the original port, the menu is there. Maybe a certain setting I’m not thinking of. Is there a way to diable the original port so the system only sees the Nvidia card? Or might it be a thing where Compaq has the whole OS set up “just right”? I hate these minor things I can’t figure out. 
Ooooh! I’m assuming you’re running Windows XP? You’ve turned on multi-monitor support. If you hook up two monitors to your PC right now, you’d have no problems. (You can even drag the task bar from one monitor to another, just as you can drag it from one side of the monitor to another with one monitor).
You can either turn off the first port in your BIOS (assuming it’s onboard, probably the easiest way), or turn off multi-monitor support in Windows. It’ll either be in the NVidia control panel, or in the Microsoft display manager (when you right-click on the desktop, choose Settings/Advanced).
I have multi-monitor support on Win2k, which means it’s is handled by the ATI driver, which means… I don’t know exactly what you have to do in your precise situation. 
TaDa! I forgot when I installed the card I had multi-monitor set up to watch DVD on TV and use the monitor for internet. I followed your lead and right-clicked the #2 monitor to deselect the “attach” option.
Thanks all, especially you, Nanoda.
Go into Control panel->Display->Settings. You should see a picture of one or more monitors with big numbers on them. Click on number 2 and select “use this as my primary monitor”, then click number 1 and unselect “extend my display onto this monitor”.
That should fix it.