lost my taskbar suddenly

[HatchetMan]

specs in priofile, running xp w/ most up to date sp2.

I have been running EAC all morning backing up my cd collection to my hard drive, no probs, still 50GB free and suddenly it freezes and will not respond. I was also running Tag&Rename at the same time organizing older mp3 files but it also froze up. I then killed the tasks and then re-opened EAC and tried again but it again froze up, again. I then reboot the computer and now my taskbar that goes along the bottom of the screen has disappeared, along with my ObjectDock bar that I had running along the top. The two things so far appear to be the only things affected but I can not seem to get them back, no matter how many reboots. Any and all help is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[HatchetMan]

I found the actual start menu and task bar properties by hitting control + esc but everthing looked in order. I can access the start menu this way but no start button or taskbar still. When I minimize any screen it just disappears too because of the lack of taskbar.

[HatchetMan]

I got impatient and did a system restore, worked.

[HatchetMan]

Ok it happened again. My PC froze while I happened to be using EAC and BitComet. I could not 'end task' so I rebooted and my taskbar disappeared again (along with my ObjectDock). I don't want to do a sys restore again. Any ideas on how else to get it back?

[greymalkin]

i've seen machines do this before, usually when they are overrun with spyware from downloading illegitimate software from "BitComet" or whatever the latest and greatest file sharing software is...

this should not come as a surprise...

[MackemX]

has it not just minimized? Have you tried moving the mouse down the bottom of the screen to see if the cursor changes so that you can drag it back up a little?