Taskbar Black in Windows XP

[gg2009]

I have XP SP 3 on my lenovo T400 laptop. If I leave the machine alone for some time the Taskbar and the Start button disappear or rather that whole bar at the bottom becomes black. I still have mouse control - sort of. I can not right click on what I think is the task bar area to bring up the Task Manager. A three-key reboot is not accepted either. The only think I can do is maybe tiny the application that is full screen and I can power off the machine.

I think that it happens if I leave an application such as FireFox up in full screen mode. FireFox is 3.6.3. I have also experience the same thing with the X-Window application Go-Global.

McAfee logs are not reporting finding anything. The Event Viewer does have the following sometimes:

Event Type: Warning
Event Source: EventSystem
Event Category: (52)
Event ID: 4354
Date: 4/19/2010
Time: 2:44:26 PM
User: N/A
Computer: XXXXXXX
Description:
The COM+ Event System failed to fire the StartScreenSaver method on subscription {F6FE5592-FCBC-44AD-A836-D37F5085ED5B}-{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}-{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}. The subscriber returned HRESULT 80004001.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

but I think I have also seen that message when nothing happened that day.

The taskbar is locked by the way.

Any ideas why this is happening or how I might find out why this is happening?

Thanks,

gg2009.

[rch1231]

Hello,

Try bringing up task manager and minimizing it to the task bar then let the screen saver kick and see what is taking up all of your CPU time. If nothing else download Maleware Bytes, update it and let it scan your system (may take an hour or two). There is a free version just make sure you are getting it from their site.

[gg2009]

Finally chkdsk failed. I checked with IT staff and they said to run hard drive diagnostics. On the boot up I think you hit F8 to bring up the BIOS. Once you do that go to hard drive diagnostic. That failed on the read.

I had the hard drive ghosted on to a new drive and everything has come back.

Any time you have to just power off the computer with out being able to do a shutdown I would do a chkdsk and then do hard drive diagnostics.

I have XP SP 3 on my lenovo T400 laptop. If I leave the machine alone for some time the Taskbar and the Start button disappear or rather that whole bar at the bottom becomes black. I still have mouse control - sort of. I can not right click on what I think is the task bar area to bring up the Task Manager. A three-key reboot is not accepted either. The only think I can do is maybe tiny the application that is full screen and I can power off the machine.

I think that it happens if I leave an application such as FireFox up in full screen mode. FireFox is 3.6.3. I have also experience the same thing with the X-Window application Go-Global.

McAfee logs are not reporting finding anything. The Event Viewer does have the following sometimes:

Event Type: Warning
Event Source: EventSystem
Event Category: (52)
Event ID: 4354
Date: 4/19/2010
Time: 2:44:26 PM
User: N/A
Computer: XXXXXXX
Description:
The COM+ Event System failed to fire the StartScreenSaver method on subscription {F6FE5592-FCBC-44AD-A836-D37F5085ED5B}-{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}-{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}. The subscriber returned HRESULT 80004001.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

but I think I have also seen that message when nothing happened that day.

The taskbar is locked by the way.

Any ideas why this is happening or how I might find out why this is happening?

Thanks,

gg2009.