BleepingComputer.com: WinXP Can't click Taskbar

Hi All,

I am running Windows XP on Intel Core 2 Quad, Asus P5KC Motherboard and 4 GB DDR3 RAM, Kaspersky Antivirus and it's behind a Router.

Off late, shortly after booting, the taskbar becomes unclickable. I can still open apps via the desktop icons but when i take the curson to the taskbar it changes from arrow type pointer to a vertical line.

My suspicion is that some hard shutdowns due to malfunctioned UPS battery might have caused some Windows corruption.

Please advise what it could be and how to correct.

Thanks.

Press ctrl+alt+del and start ending processes like Kaspersky till the issue goes away.

Open msconfig and on the General tab choose "selective startup" (uncheck all three items) and reboot. Does the problem still occur? If not, start adding items back to msconfig one or two at a time, rebooting after each change, until the problem reappears and you'll have identified the offending process. This is clearly a time consuming procedure, but it is the best way to determine if some process loading with the system is the cause of your problem.
After you've isolated the cause, do not use msconfig to permanently disable the process. Instead, if it is a service go to START - RUN and type: services.msc (then press enter) and disable the service OR, if it a program, you can download & run a simple app such as Mike Lin's Startup Control Panel (http://www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml) to enable, disable, or otherwise manage startup programs.