Deb
Try hitting the F8 key on startup and choose Safe Mode. This will set the taskbar to it's defaiult posistion.
For the slowness, how many background programs are running. Tap the Alt_Ctl_Del keys once and post back what's in the list.
General speed-up tips include:
If it's running that poorly, right-click on My Computer, click the Performance tab and verify the File System and Virtual Memory are 32-bit.
Click the Virtual Memory button and make sure that Windows is managing the virtual memory. Move your swapfile to a partition with more space, if possible.
If those are OK, try these steps to eliminate unecessary program running:
The things that make the computer slow are the many unecessary items that automatically startup when Windows starts.
Right-click on the icons in the tray area, open each, go through the options to turn off the "tray" or "run at startup" feature.
For the others, go to Start>Run, type msconfig. Leave systray, scan registry, Load Power Profile (both), your virus scanner and firewall if you have one.
Go to Start>Run, type sysedit. Look over the autoexec.bat for unneccessary lines, click the win.ini and check for programs loading here:
[windows]
load=
run=
Open Explorer and navigate to c:\windows\temp and delete all files and folders here. Empty the Recycle Bin.
Right-click on the desktop, make sure Active Desktop is turned off, then click properties and click the Effects tab. turn off Animate windows, menus, and lists.
Close all tray applications and hit Alt_Ctl_Del and end task on all items except for explorer and systray, disable your screensaver, then run scandisk, then defrag.
If you don't know what an entry is or what it does, post back.
reghakr
