unresponsive taskbar and start menu

Hi Everyone

Was just wondering if anyone can help me out .. Im running Windows XP Pro SP2 .. Yesterday my taskbar and start menu became totally unresponsive .. I havent installed any new programs etc ..

I have tried a system restore and also disabling the SSDP thingy and it still hasnt started working .. I can access the 'control panel' through 'my computer' but when I click on the 'start menu' to open it, it doesnt open at all .. Everything else is working fine .. I can access the net etc through the shortcut on my desktop and when I want to restart I access the 'task manager' and restart that way .. But when I minimise a page it doesnt show it on the taskbar and when I want to reopen it I have to access the 'task manager' and reopen it that way ..

Please .. Any help will be really appreciated .. As this is driving me nuts ..

 

Hi plodr

When I booted in safe mode the taskbar and start menu was still unresponsive and trying to press the windows key did nothing either .. Auto updates are enabled and they downloaded fine also ..

What I did end up doing though was creating another user account and seeing if the taskbar and start menu would still be unresponsive and they werent .. So I copied all of my files etc from the main account to the new account and deleted the old account ..

Im still not sure what the problem could have been (and I should have noted what processes were working/not working in both accounts) but I was just happy to have everything up and running again ..