found this at the link below:
The workaround: press CTRL+ALT+DEL to fire up the Task Manager. Now on the File menu, select New Task (Run...). Type in "explorer" and press OK. That should restart explorer and re-display your Taskbar.

Here is a link that might be useful: My Taskbar is missing and I have no Start button - what do I do?

chemocurl, I thank you so very much....that seems to have done the trick. Everything is back to normal as far as I can tell. Woopee.

I'm so lucky and thankful to have found this forum and received all the help that I have. Wow, I was afraid that is was going to be a disaster. THANK YOU again.

You're so welcome. It's not often that I can actually help anyone.

All your grandson did was stop a process he shouldn't have; he didn't actually make any permanent changes to your computer. All you needed to do was reboot to get back to normal. Remember that you don't need to be able to navigate anywhere on the screen to reboot. If you need to reboot due to some other problem in the future, you can just hold down the power button for 5-10 seconds until the computer shuts down and reboots itself.

kudzu9, thanks, I'll try to remember that for future reference. But you have the knowledge of the workings of the computer and the confidence to do those kinds of fixes, but you are talking to a person that had no idea what to do. The learning go on...

lotodig-
Just so you're more confident, I've re-booted my computer many times over the years using the technique I've described. Several times, for example, my cursor has frozen so I couldn't navigate to do anything, such as re-boot normally. I didn't always know why some problem was happening, but I did know that the power button re-boot would not make anything worse. Usually the only time you can have a problem is if you decide to do a re-boot/re-start of any kind in the middle of some major activity where you are making changes to the computer, such as installing updates or doing a defragmentation. However, in the other 99.9% of cases, all you're doing is cleaning out the RAM of some unexplained little problem and starting fresh.

Or, you may get a black and white DOS screen reporting Windows has shut down abruptly, and several options for a user to select. It's been a while, but as I recall the last time at work where we lost power to the XP systems the correct selection was to choose Normal. My Vista system did it once a long time ago, and I can't remember the options.

DA

thanks for the encouragement..I have learned so much from lurking here for several years now.

damccoy is correct, and I should have mentioned that detail. When it reboots after a power button shutdown, you are likely to get a screen stating that Windows didn't shut down normally. Don't panic...that's what happened, but it doesn't mean anything bad or that you messed anything up! All you have to do is select "Start Windows Normally" from the options that are displayed if it isn't already highlighted.

I was just working on an Acer laptop yesterday when it locked up. I had to manually shut it down, then restart. The Error-Checking utility appeared announcing possible disk errors along with the opportunity to abort the process if so desired. I seized the chance to skip the process, and the system operated normally.

It took me back to the pre-XP days when the System File Checker was a common ritual.

DA