Thanks much for the explanation of the root cause.  Clicking once on every button 
does clear the problem.

Cheers!

-F







On Tuesday, September 18, 2007 at 4:15 pm, Ron Anderson wrote:

>I've answered your question below, but first:  

>

>The real cause of this problem is a missed notification.  When a minimized task 
requires 

>input, windows notifies you by flashing the taskbar button orange for a few seconds, 

>then leaves the button displayed and highlighted.  Those of us who use auto-hide 

>have the added benefit of having our taskbar locked open.  A windows bug causes 
the 

>highlighting to sometimes be lost, but windows is still waiting for you to click 

>on that one button--the one for that minimized task requiring your input.   Since 

>the highlighting has been lost, the only way to click the right button is to click 

>every button one at a time until you eventually click the appropriate one.   The 

>taskbar will then revert to normal.  (btw, don't click them through them too quickly--usually 

>a rate of one button per second works best.   A pain, I know, but it works and consistently 

>for me.  

>

>
To answer your question, Explorer.exe is what controls the task bar, the desktop, 

>Windows Explorer, all the visual components you use to interact with Windows.   
When 

>you use "end process" on  "explorer.exe", it is literally forcing it to stop running. 

>  Most of the time, Windows will detect that it has stopped running and will automatically 

>restart Explorer.exe.  During that restart, it rebuilds the task bar as best as 
it 

>can by detecting what is currently running.  You should note that it doesn't always 

>work, and when that happens you are left with a blank screen.    The only option 

>at that point that I am aware of is to power off your PC.   I suspect this is the 

>scenario being referred to when the user suggested that you do a "run", "new process". 

> The problem is that when the "end process" on explorer.exe doesn't work, the run 

>command is no longer available.

>

>
Hope this helped.

>

>

>
 

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