Hello infopabbo00,
Welcome to Windows 7 Forums!
First and foremost, consider reinstalling the program you used to hide the taskbar, and then uninstalling it properly. If I read your post correctly, you said that this uninstallation was interrupted, and such incomplete uninstallations can result in such issues. Do the same for any other interrupted uninstallations performed shortly prior since the issue arose.
Second, if the "proper uninstallation" method doesn't work, consider running SFC. This will check all of Microsoft's files and replace them with the factory default. Note that this will not affect your personal files and documents, but if you ran an UxStyle patch or .dll or other system-file changes, they will be undone. You can do this by accessing an
Administrator Command Prompt (it MUST have elevated rights or this will not succeed) then typing:
This will fix all modified Windows system files on your computer. You may need to reboot afterwards.
Finally, if this STILL doesn't work or SFC runs into errors like it does on my own computer, consider running a repair install. If you have a Windows 7 Install DVD
of the same bitness as your current OS (that is, if you're using 32-bit OS, the install DVD must also contain 32-bit target files, and the same goes for 64 bit), then you can perform a repair install or Upgrade install (it does not matter exactly what distribution the disk is, i.e. it doesn't matter if the disk is Home Premium, Professional, etc, but whatever disk you use will be the result OS you'll end up with). There are several ways to do this,
all of which require a new Windows license, so if you decide to use ANY of these methods, you should bear this in mind:
- If you are running certain builds of Windows, there's a nice feature called "Windows Anytime Upgrade". Find it in your Start Menu under Start > All Programs. You'll need a special Anytime Upgrade Key (I'm pretty sure keys that are used with DVD installations are different), and this is the shortest repair route. Your computer may reboot several times in the process.
- You can run a repair installation by going to Start > Control Panel (Category View) > System and Security > Backup and Restore > Recover system settings or your computer > Advanced recovery methods > Reinstall Windows. As noted, you are strongly recommended to backup files, although User folders and the Program Files/Program Files (x86) folders will be left intact inside C:\Windows.old. Simply copy things over if you need to, or reinstall them. I've never used this particular repair route before. Your installation disk used must be the same version as the version of OS used (Home Premium must be used on Home Premium, Ultimate on Ultimate, etc.).
- Run an upgrade install by inserting a Windows disk (any version of disk will work, as long as its the same bit) then running the AutoRun from Explorer, or opening the disk and running setup.exe. When prompted, click "Upgrade" or something like that. Windows will then be upgraded/repaired. Your files and programs will be left intact. Your computer may reboot several times in the process.
Best of luck on fixing your computer!
