Lost my Windows Taskbar how do I get it back?

A missing Taskbar can be caused by either the Taskbar being on Auto hide or the computer user accidentally hiding the Taskbar by dragging it down too far.

Verify Auto hide is not activated by following the steps below.

In Windows Vista and later:

1. Press both Ctrl and Esc at the same time or your Windows key to make Start Menuappear.

2. Click on Control Panel and select Taskbar and Start Menu.

3. Verify that auto-hide the taskbar is not checked.

Note: In newer versions of Windows, instead of clicking Settings in the Start Menu, select Control Panel. After that, select Taskbar and Start Menu in the Control Panel, and then verify auto-hide the taskbar is not checked.

In Windows XP and earlier:

1. Press both Ctrl and Esc at the same time or your Windows key to make Start Menu appear.

2. Click Settings and choose Taskbar & Start Menu.

3. Verify that Auto Hide is not checked.

If Auto Hide is not enabled, move the Taskbar up by following the steps below.

1. Press Ctrl+Esc or your Windows key to make Start Menu appear.

2. Determine where Start Menu appears. By default, it should be the bottom-left corner.

3. Press Esc. You should now notice a small gray line at the location of where the start button was.

4. Move the mouse cursor over that gray line. When in the appropriate position, your mouse cursor should change into a double-headed arrow. Once the mouse cursor has changed, click and hold the mouse button and move the bar up.

Load into Safe Mode to fix Taskbar

If you still cannot get the Taskbar to show, reboot the computer and load the computer into Windows Safe Mode. Once in Safe Mode, Restart the computer once again and the Taskbar should be restored.

Restore Windows to earlier point or version

If after trying the above three options, the Taskbar is still not showing, your computer may have some corrupt system files that are preventing the Taskbar from showing.

To fix this issue, you can try restoring Windows to an earlier version or previous restore point. Restoring Windows may fix the issue by going back to a version of Windows when the system files were not corrupt.