XP, losing start bar and taskbar

[swamp-fox]

I don't know what happened but I cannot click on the start button to access ANY programs. Desktop icon's work though, but when you minimize them they disappear instead of going down to taskbar. (i can get them back by alt/tab) Puter is taking forever to boot up once it gets to the windows sign-on screen it takes about 1 minute to open. I have scanned with Norton systemworks. ad-aware, spybot, also did a online scan @pcpitstop.
When I move the mouse over the start button or taskbar I just get an hourglass.

I have tried to restore 2 times back to different dates. It will work the first time but after a couple of minutes the start button and taskbar are locked.

Wifes puter.
xp-home updated to xp-pro about a year ago. Really haven't had many problems before. Maybe the kids were surfing and got click happy. I do know they installed 2 games (small word puzzle games) Now the taskbar is gone and it's just black bar at the bottom.

I've also tried to repair with the windows disk but it want's an administator password, she says she didn't put one on it.
If I go to safe mode I am able to access the start button and most the programs

I want to just format/ reinstall but she's not game for that, she has a lot of work and checkbook etc on it.

Help
Swamp

[LeftCoast]

You can remove her HDD, slave it to you puter, transfer all files she wants to save, replace the HDD in her box, wipe the HDD (with Killdisk) to write zeros to the drive, reinstall the OS. Then do the same to your box.


Also, try Spybot Search and Destroy and Spyware Blaster. They can help to remove "hijacker" programs.

What I'd do...

[bullgator]

Sounds like the kids got into some settings.
1st: open control panel and click on taskbar and start menu and verify the settings. Unlock your task bar and see what happens.
Hit control escape to bring up your start menu.

[doddsy]

hit the windows button on yer keebord, that should bring up the task bar.

wen its on scren right click on an empty bit of the taskbar then click properties then "uncheck" the "autohide task bar " box.

doddsy

[swamp-fox]

the taskbar and start button are back but are useless. I can't even get the start menu by hitting ctrl-esc buttons. We found (bargainbuddy) on it but cannot remove it. It will jump to websites while surfing or just reading e-mail. I've run spybot/ad-aware/norton -AV and complete norton systemworks scan. The only error was in disk-doctor about some program having use of the disk and norton couldn't fix. I used task-manager to see what was running I turned off everything that is not needed.

One thing that keeps loading that I cannot find any info on is
0GHsCE.exe I do not know what it is and google has nothing on it.
another thing I just found is WUauclt.exe is a windows ME updater. First time I saw that one and why is it on a WinXP system?

BTW we are networked thru linksys router so I think I can just transfer all her files over to my machine and just format/reinstall on her's. She doesn't like the format reinstall deal. I do it couple time a year. But she say's she has computers at work that have been running for couple of years just fine so there must be a way to just fix it instead of drastic reinstall.

edit: when I said taskbar is locked I meant it is frozen. I checked and it is unlocked.
Thanks

Swamp

edit#2: The only way I can get to control panel is thru norton recyclebin. When in control panel I cannot open taskbar and startmenu icon.

[swamp-fox]

Another thing is the time has been jumping around. The other day it was about 43 minutes off then about 1 hour off now its 1hour and 24 minutes behind. Shouldn't the cmos battery keep the time correct?? Could this be a battery problem??? Wife said the puter's been pretty slow for a few months.

Swamp

[swamp-fox]

Update. I may have fixed it I 've been running ad-aware and spybot, etc as mentioned earlier. However I just realized ad-aware has a new version 1.81. I installed the new version and it found 167 data-miners and other junk. I deleted all the trash and now puter seems to be working ok. It still has very long boot up times from the time you click on login to usable is about a minute or longer. I can't figure how it took over the start button where it wouldn't work though.

Swamp

[swamp-fox]

Sorry about so many posts but now we have spontaneous reboots. I'm wondering if it's not a hardware problem now. If it's not even in windows yet, how can it be a software problem???

It'll boot to the biostar screen and just keep rebooting until it's starts windows.


I checked systems specs in bios. The 12 volt never gets over 11.00 volts All the other voltages seem ok.

I haven't install any new hardware. I did remove a modem that I never took out after adding NIC card. That's the only thing different.

swamp