Blank button on taskbar

[bike1100]

Windows 2000 gets a blank button on the taskbar, clicking this button does NOT open it or allow any action, it does nothing. right click, left click, or whatever! the task manager does not appear to have any strange tasks running. Spybot will not remove it. Don't know why it appears or under what circumstances it appears. Used to reboot the PC to get rid of it, but it comes back after a while. Have since discovered that stopping explorer.exe in taskmanager processes tab then starting it again, start new task, explorer.exe brings, this action stops this blank button and the desktop comes back without the it on the taskbar. But like the reboot option it still comes back again after a while. ANY IDEAS anybody.

 

[DirtDawg]

sounds like you have ap rogram in your startup folder that is missing the icon.img. Check your startup folders for any programs that might be causeing the problem. Do not forget to check the all users also

 

[bike1100]

If you mean in the STARTUP group that kicks in when windows starts that cannot be it because the blanks button doesn't appear then it appears after a period of time that I have yet to determine, so for say the first hour after a reboot the blank button isn't there.

 

[bike1100]

No further info on this then anybody, I'm still stopping explorer.exe and restarting it to get rid of this blank button when it appears on the taskbar.

 

[Auger282]

sounds like a program isnt loading/unloading properly

I would check your startup programs either in the registry or msconfig.. take out anything that shouldnt be starting up.. could be spyware too...

microsoft.com/spyware

 

[bcastner]

Let the Microsoft/Giant Antispyware examine the system:

http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx