These are in order from my standpoint as I tried various things. First, a program that she had been using for her Philips MP3 player (a device manager program) that was one of the startup programs, opened a pop-up error that said that it was unable to open and needed to close. Your standard program x has encountered a problem and needs to close dialog box. Next, I noticed that the darn taskbar wasn't on the screen, except for what looked like the very top of it. Just like if you were to resize it when it is not locked, and you can still see the very top of it just so you have something to grab on to resize again. I right-clicked what was visible and it brought up the menu that normally comes up when you click the task-bar (lock, toolbars, properties, etc.) Everything was checked that had been checked before in the toolbar part. For her it was, windows media player, and quick launch. But no task bar. So I clicked on properties from within that same menu and opened the taskbar and start menu properties window. I unchecked "show quick launch" and then checked it again, for no other reason than I wanted to see if it made a difference. It did. All of a sudden, the task bar showed up but with a lot more quick launch icons then ever before. This is when it gets weird. I right-clicked the now visible taskbar, went to "toolbars" and unchecked quick launch. As soon as I did the darn task bar disappeared again. Repeating the same steps as above I got it to display again, follwed by me unchecking something and having it disappear again and again. This happens with any of the toolbars and not just quick launch. If I check "links" or "addresses", the task bar shows up immediately but as soon as you uncheck all of the toolbars, it disappears. (??)

Next, it got even crazier. If I open and explore anything, say my computer or any other folder on my (her) desktop, it opens as normal. But when I go to minimize it, instead of minimizin to the taskbar, it will do one of two things, depending on the taskbar setting I have checked. One, if I have the "keep the taskbar on top of other windows" checked, whatever I am minimizing will minimize just above the taskbar and then allows you to move the little minimized window wherever you want to. Or two, if I have "keep the taskbar on top of other windows" UN-checked, and I try to minimize whatever window I have open, it completely minimizes off the screen. the only way at that point to bring it back is to ctrl-alt-delete and click "switch-to" in the task manager.