Anyone still running Windows 7?

Right here find the right driver and get it installed

Taylor Morales31 said:Instead of just tearing you down, maybe try actually helping him out with his 👍
question...
Look, Maki, honestly, with the massive amount of RAM you're rocking, you really shouldn't be hitting any snags with gadgets, unless some of those non-Microsoft ones are just dragging down your startup speed, like they need a second to breathe before they finally hit the desktop

oh, thanks man 🙂 xD

Start Menu 😁

I clearly clicked something I shouldn't have. Now, whenever I launch an application—say, Internet Explorer or VLC Media Player—the taskbar just vanishes. To even get back to the Start menu, I have to hit the sleep button on my keyboard (or whatever that key is called).
Any idea how I can get my taskbar back to normal? 😁

Taylor Doyle79 said:the taskbar just vanished 😁

I think I fat-fingered something because now whenever I pull up an app—like Internet Explorer or VLC—the whole taskbar just disappears. And if I actually want to hit Start, I have to mash the sleep button on my keyboard (or whatever that key is called).
Any idea how to get my taskbar back to normal? 😁

just try running System Restore to a date when everything was actually working

Does anyone have a less aggressive solution?
I haven't even created a System Restore point, so none of that will work here.

Is the taskbar set to "auto hide" or something? 🤷

Not quite.
It only seems to happen when I'm using Internet Explorer; everything runs perfectly fine in Mozilla. 🤷

If you're running Windows 7, just disable IE and set Mozilla Firefox as your default browser. Honestly, I don't know what else to tell you; I'm not on a Windows machine right now, so this is just my best guess.

Taylor Doyle79 said:it only happens when I'm using IE; Mozilla works just fine. 🤷

Maybe you've got IE stuck in full-screen mode?
Next time you're in IE, try hitting the F11 key.

Christian Morris80 said:Is it possible you just have IE stuck in full-screen mode?
Try hitting the F11 key once you've got IE open.

Nice work, genius.🙏 🙏
👍

I could really use some help here. I just finished installing Windows 7 on my HP laptop... and when I pull up the Device Manager, I'm staring at a yellow exclamation mark. It's sitting right there under Other Devices - Unknown Device... and I honestly can't figure out how to clear it. What am I looking at here? How do I fix this? Everything else seems to be running fine, though.
Thanks in advance!

jadesurfer5 said:I could use some help. I just put Windows 7 on an HP laptop... and now there's a yellow exclamation mark in Device Manager. It's sitting under Other Devices - Unknown Device and I can't seem to fix it... any idea what's going on or how to clear it up? Everything else seems fine, I guess.
Thanks in advance!

Maybe try running HP Softpaq download manager. It should scan the system and hopefully find whatever drivers you're missing.

Thanks!
I'll give it a shot and let you know how it goes.

Keith Bennett38 said:Give the HP Softpaq download manager a shot. It scans your hardware automatically and serves up the specific drivers you actually need.

That doesn't work on my HP 615. I’ve had much better luck using Driver Genius Pro—it actually does the job.👍

None of those programs actually fixed my issue... so I just left it as an "Unknown device."

I really wanted to learn how to handle this for next time, though. I honestly have no clue which specific component is missing its drivers...
Is there any way to look it up "manually" and then just install it?

jadesurfer5 said:None of those programs actually fixed my issue... so I just left it as an Unknown device...

I was actually hoping to learn how to fix this for next time... since I have zero clue which specific component is missing its drivers...
Is there any way to look it up "manually" and then install it?!

Maybe give HP Support Assistant a shot?

Or you could just hit up the HP support site, find your specific laptop model, and grab all the drivers. If you install them one by one, one of them will probably sort out that mystery device for you! 🙂

Is everything actually functioning correctly on your end?

Honestly, just try disabling it in the Device Manager first. It might help you pinpoint exactly what's causing the conflict, though there's a chance you won't see any noticeable difference after you do.

Hey everyone, this is my girlfriend's laptop. It seemed totally fine all day yesterday, but now that blinking light is acting up again... I haven't quite figured out what's causing it yet.
I gave her an HP and told her if she notices anything glitching, we’ll just reinstall Windows. Honestly, good to know about HP Support Assistance... I hadn't heard of that before, so I'll try using it to fix this.

How do you actually disable a component? Is it just a right-click or something like that?!

Thanks, guys!

jadesurfer5 said:Look, this is my girlfriend's laptop. It seemed totally fine all day yesterday, but that exclamation mark is sitting there for some reason... I haven't figured out the root cause yet...
I handed her the HP and told her if she notices anything acting up, we'll just reinstall Windows... Honestly, good to know about HP Support Assistance... I had no clue that was an option, so I'm going to try using it to sort this out.

How do you actually disable a component? Is it just a right-click or something like that?!

Thanks, everyone!

Yeah, just go into Device Manager, click on the specific item until it's highlighted, right-click it, and hit disable.👍

Hey everyone, I’ve run into a bit of a situation here and I’m feeling a little frantic... To get straight to the point, I set up a login password for my Windows system, but when I went to restart and actually test if I remembered it correctly, it just kept telling me the password was wrong. I have no idea what happened—did I misspell something? Did it just not save? Does anyone have any experience dealing with this kind of lockout? It's a Windows 7 64 bit Ultimate machine. I would really appreciate some help if anyone has a solution, this is pretty urgent for me... Note to self: never, ever set a Windows password again.