Solved Taskbar disappeared & can't get it back

[Mike99]

My lower taskbar disappeared. I was closing out a program & must have accidentally hit a wrong key. There is no start menu or anything.

I searched & did everything but to no avail.

It is not hidden. I cannot drag it out from any edge of the screen.

I checked the Presentation Display Settings.

Went to Task Manager > File > New Task (Run) and created a new task. I used both explorer and explorer.exe but neither one made a difference.

I did notice something when I was in Control Panel > Task Bar & Start Menu. When I changed the Taskbar from bottom to top or any edge & clicked on Apply, the Desktop icons would shift as if to make room for the Taskbar. Like the Taskbar is there but invisible.

Any suggestions what else to try?

Thanks

 

[Snick]

Hi Mike99,
A few questions:
Can you access the Start Menu with CTRL + ESC?
Have you tried scanning for malware? Malwarebytes free
Have you run SFC /SCANNOW from elevated CMD?

 

[Bongo]

Try Ctrl+Alt+Del then logoff/logon.


Jerry

 

[Mike99]

I can access the Start Menu with CTRL + ESC. The Windows key also brings it up. That's how I accessed the Control Panel. However that got me nowhere.

I did not scan for any malware. The Taskbar disappeared when I was pressing keys & I felt that was the reason for the problem. I realize that's not a guarantee but that's how I proceeded. Also did not run SFC /SCANNOW

Guess I could have tried to logoff/logon, but didn't think of that at the time.

What came to mind in the early hours was doing a system restore. I looked & restore point was created a day ago so I just rolled back one day & got the taskbar back.

It still makes me wonder what the heck I pressed to lose the taskbar, and that none of the usual repair suggestions fixed the problem.