Windows 7 taskbar turned off - how do I get it back?

Jed Shields · 7 Feb 2010 at 09:43

Hi guys,

I turned the taskbar off while playing about with a new theme, but now want it back. How do I do this?

EDIT - Windows 7 Home Premium edition.

monkeygremlin · 7 Feb 2010 at 10:00

I didn't realise you could turn it off. It's not on Auto-Hide is it? :confused:

Jed Shields · 7 Feb 2010 at 11:41

Nope, I can't find it at all lol. I assume autohide is when it pops up when the mouse is at the bottom of the screen?

monkeygremlin · 7 Feb 2010 at 12:01

Thats's right, it's enabled with a tick box in the Taskbar properties. If it's not that the only thing I can thing of is the monitor adjustment is putting it out of view.

leoncc · 7 Feb 2010 at 12:06

Try starting a new task from task manager "explorer.exe"

ejr22 · 7 Feb 2010 at 12:10

Have you moved it to the left/right/top of the screen and enabled Auto-hide? Point at all edges of your screen to see if it reappears? As said above - pretty sure that you can't turn it off completely, so it is either being auto-hidden or your screen resolution/position is obscuring it.

What happens when you press the Windows button on your keyboard (if your keyboard hasn't got a Windows button, use the on-screen keyboard in Ease of Access)? This should bring the Start menu up and reveal the taskbar's whereabouts.

Jed Shields · 7 Feb 2010 at 12:30

It's not at any of the screen edges. If I press the windows button the side bar bit pops up in the bottom left hand side of the screen.

When I look at the Taskbar options screen through Control Panel, everything is set up okay, and there's plenty of icons that are ticked as show and notify ...

ejr22 · 7 Feb 2010 at 12:52

After a quick Google it seems that this is a fairly common complaint. After scan reading a few of the things people have been posting it seems that the problem may be associated with screensavers and/or sleep & hibernate.

As said, I have only scan-read some other forums but one work around you can try is:

Right click onto your desktop and then open up your screen saver. Preview the screen saver. When the preview is through, the taskbar has returned.

If that doesn't work then I would suggest a good dose of Google is needed. Here is my source for that one tip.

Jed Shields · 7 Feb 2010 at 16:49

Right, when I said I was playing with a new theme I'm actually using Rainmeter. And it seems that it is Rainmeter that has forced the taskbar to remain hidden. What I need to do is set TrayIcon to 1 instead of 0 in the Rainmeter.ini file. Unfortunately I'm having trouble locating this file :/

Jed Shields · 7 Feb 2010 at 17:40

Further update - I've found the ini file , but just realised that the tray icon is not the taskbar lol ...