Windows 7: Taskbar missing, goes weird

Hi there,

Occasionally, my Windows 7 64-bit Ultimate produces a bizarre taskbar issue, emptying the right icons such as the clock, speaker etc. completely, and I'm unsure what's causing it or how to solve it. The only temporary measure that seems to be solving the problem is restarting explorer.exe through the Task Manager, but like I mentioned, it's temporary and can get incredibly frustrating

There may be some damaged or corrupt system files. Try running a system file checker scan from an elevated command prompt (option two.) If problems are found run the scan 3 times and reboot the computer after each scan.

SFC /SCANNOW Command - System File Checker

Since you seem to be able to solve the problem by restarting explorer.exe through the Task Manager, you may have a registry problem involving IconStreams and PastIconsStream.

1. Back up the registry by creating a restore point (just in case)
System Restore Point - Create
System Restore (just in case)
2. Rest notification area icons.
Notification Area Icons - Reset

You can also rebuild the icon cache.

Icon Cache - Rebuild