Taskbar Problems

I have a fairly unique taskbar problem. Every time I reboot, Windows XP Home works like a champ aside from the fact that my taskbar is completely empty.

I always have it set to have the Quick Launch bar along with the Address bar on the top row, then have the actual running apps how on the bottom row.

So, I'll set that all back up, then lock the taskbar. Works fine, until I reboot again.

Because of this, I've gone so far as to repair the installation of XP. Three times now. Once, I ran CCleaner trying to see if that would fix it. It did not, so I reinstalled again. This last time I ran into a snag as described here:

(URL address blocked: See forum rules)

I completed all of that and the final installation worked fine... But the taskbar problem persists.

What recommendations do you guys have? Any ideas on what I could try to help fix this?

Thanks so much!

Welcome to the forums

Have you tried installing Windows Defender from the microsoft website?
Once you install, you can run a full scan to see what it finds.

Two co-workers had a similar problem, and that fixed it.

Sounds like you have had infections on your machine. Have you ran adware/spyware scans on your machine to ensure that there are no infections remaining ? If you haven't, can you download, update the definitions and run Spybot S & D, Ad-Aware, and AVG Anti-Spyware. After you have ran all these programs, run a thorough Anti-Virus scan. Should you not have any AV software on your machine, have a look at running an online scan at Panda Active Scan or Trend Micro Housecall or by downloading and installing AVG Free.

These should clear up any infections that you have on your machine. If you are still expeiriending problems, it sounds like it has changed a registry key. Can you go to Start > Run and type 'regedit' (without the quotes) and navigate to the following key:Once you are here, in the explorer Window look for the key marked 'Userinit' and ensure that the value is as following and if it isn't, then change it