Today when i tried to turn start up my computer the start button and task bar were gone. at first i thought i had accidentally resized it, but it is totally gone. the windows start button on the key board works but puts the start menu in the middle of the screen. i tried going to control panel to check the settings and everything checked out.I tried using task mannager to run explorer.exe but no luck. I also tried to use a start and task bar restore from kellys-korner-xp.com but that didn't work either. Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

Taskbar Is Missing When You Log On to Windows

http://support.microsoft.com/defaul...

Also try this:
http://www.computing.net/windowsxp/...

Try this to Repair your Taskbar.
Taskbar Repair Tool Plus. Under the picture click on - Download Here.
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/tas...

Well my problem seems to have fixed it self. after a few days without my task bar or start menu it just magicly came back. i dont know what happened. some sort of system glitch i guess, perhaps a virus. well thanks any ways for replying to my problem.

The Problem seemed to go away only temporaryily. today when i logged on, and my task bar dissapeared again. so i went to the microsoft link in one of the above comments , and ran the msconfig.exe program. from here i went to the start up tab and reasearched all the unknown programs and un needed programs that my computer was running. then i stopped all the unwanted start up processes and applied the settings. I am guessing that i had way too many programs running on start up, because now my computer has been running fine.