Unable to unlock taskbar; no icons on desktop; no right-click menus

A

angrybusdriver

Gawd
Joined
Jul 16, 2003
Messages
684
Here's the scoop. My workstation got setup by some independent tech who has since pretty much vanished.

He installed WinXP Professional X64 onto the workstation for some reason. I'm a web developer and I absolutely don't need/want X64 because of whatever limitations, and it's not like I need it.

Anyways, I'm stuck with it because I don't want to take my boss's time fixing something he already paid for. It'll get fixed eventually, but I'm on a tight schedule and even making this post feels like a huge waste of time to me.

The problem isn't exactly that he installed X64 though, it's that he installed a bunch of garbage with it. Customizer XP and TweakUI are both installed and both "tweaked" apparently. I had to enable all of the Control Panel extensions again and do all sorts of other crap.

Here's my main problem though. I have no Right-Click menus on the desktop or taskbar, or taskbar applications. When I right click on a taskbar application, the window (such as this one) loses focus but no menu appears. I'm quite sure this was just applied as a tweak for whatever reason. The case is the same on the administrator account and this setting apparently applies to all users.

taskbarproperties.gif


As you can see, I can't unlock the taskbar.


So, symptoms:

1) No right-click menus on the taskbar or desktop
2) No desktop icons and no way to enable them (there's an option in TweakUI, but it does nothing.)
3) Windows lose focus when taskbar applications are right clicked
4) Cannot unlock taskbar (no option to)


Anyone have ANY ideas?
 
Update:

I tried a plethora of registry fixes from http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm (recommended on MSFT Community Newsgroups), but to no avail.

None of them have restored right-click access to the taskbar. I did however manage to unlock it. I still have no right click access on the taskbar, taskbar applications and the desktop, though.
 
In order to get get no icons on my desktop in windows 2000 I had to use a regestry hack, and that hack did the exact things that you are describing, I of of course wanted this to happen.

I'll try to google it to find what I did. I am not sure it would help tho.

edit: here is is. here
 
L1ght said:
In order to get get no icons on my desktop in windows 2000 I had to use a regestry hack, and that hack did the exact things that you are describing, I of of course wanted this to happen.

I'll try to google it to find what I did. I am not sure it would help tho.

edit: here is is. here
Click to expand...
ah awesome. Thanks!

That ALMOST fixed all of my problems.

The last problem is that I still can't right click on anything on my Taskbar. I CAN right click on my desktop, I DO have Desktop icons now... but the taskbar is still dead to my right mouse button :(


edit: Fixed it with another reg key in that same folder.

NoTrayContext is the key I needed to change for that.

Thanks.
 
have you looked at the local security policy?

start->run->gpedit.msc

Are you an administrator on that machine? Domain membership or not?
 
drizzt81 said:
have you looked at the local security policy?

start->run->gpedit.msc

Are you an administrator on that machine? Domain membership or not?
Click to expand...
yes all that was the first thing I checked. As I posted above it was all just retarded registry tweaks.
 
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