I have XP SP 3 on my lenovo T400 laptop. If I leave the machine alone for some time the Taskbar and the Start button disappear or rather that whole bar at the bottom becomes black. I still have mouse control - sort of. I can not right click on what I think is the task bar area to bring up the Task Manager. A three-key reboot is not accepted either. The only think I can do is maybe tiny the application that is full screen and I can power off the machine.
I think that it happens if I leave an application such as FireFox up in full screen mode. FireFox is 3.6.3. I have also experience the same thing with the X-Window application Go-Global.
McAfee logs are not reporting finding anything. The Event Viewer does have the following sometimes:
Event Type: Warning
Event Source: EventSystem
Event Category: (52)
Event ID: 4354
Date: 4/19/2010
Time: 2:44:26 PM
User: N/A
Computer: XXXXXXX
Description:
The COM+ Event System failed to fire the StartScreenSaver method on subscription {F6FE5592-FCBC-44AD-A836-D37F5085ED5B}-{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}-{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}. The subscriber returned HRESULT 80004001.
For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
but I think I have also seen that message when nothing happened that day.
The taskbar is locked by the way.
Any ideas why this is happening or how I might find out why this is happening?
Thanks,
gg2009.