XP Start menu and quicklaunch crap out.

I have had a few occasions (on two different machines) when using XP with "classic" layout, and a double high taskbar, when my start menu ceases to function. Clicking it with the mouse does nothing, and pressing the windows keys makes the button get focus, but not appear. Nothing will cause it to come up again until a reboot. Upon rebooting however, my taskbar is returned to default settings, my quicklaunch gone, and when I re-enable the quick launch, the friggin things are all out of order. In the mean time, I'm prefixed them all with a letter, because it always rearranges them in alphabetical order. Has anyone else experienced this problem, or know of a fix for it?

Bill

Can you give us the configuration of your machine/s ?

It's happened on my desktop:

P4-2ghz, 256M ram, screen resolution 1280x1024 nvidia tnt2.

and my laptop:

Pentium M 1.6 ghz, 512 M ram, screen resolution 1024x768 Mobility Radeon 9000 (Dell Latitude m600)

Both using XP Service pack 2, both using "classic" start menu/taskbar, with the taskbar configured like the attatched image.

Only thing in common with the two machines, is the XP version, service pack 2, and the way I make the taskbar look.

Ive never had this problem before. I did a little googling and found a few threads on something simillar. Hope they help:

http://www.softwaretipsandtricks.com...-recovers.html
http://www.techspot.com/vb/all/windo...r-Freezes.html

Maybe it is due to the number of icons in your Task bar?? Aint sure about it though?

Shouldn't be as I've had about fifty icons on the task bar without trouble.
Could it perhaps be your graphics card? (Drawing at straws here I know)