classic start menu messed up

[npfanz]

I don't know why, but for some reason my classic start menu is messed up. There is just a black bar where the windows xp words are supposed to be along the left side (see attached). Any ideas why? I use true launch bar, but even when I disable that it is messed up. That was my only idea.
Thanks!

 

[Hipster Doofus]

Have you been changing themes? Try an original xp one if you have.

 

[zyfos]

I agree with Hipster. Try changing themes. You might want to try to change to something besides a built in Windows theme (try style xp or "editing" your uxtheme.dll file). You might find somethin that you like better in the process anyway.

 

[dadx2mj]

Kind of a shot in the dark but if changing the theme doesn't work you could try running System File Check. Go to start and then run. In the dialog box type "sfc /scannow" without the quotes. You will need your XP CD disk for this to work. Good Luck

 

[stuppy]

Because you are missing a couple of menus (Help and Find) from the start bar, the actual graphic that says "windows xp blah blah" is too big to fitinto that gap so instead it just goes black
add more items to your menu and you find that the graphic comes back....

 

[npfanz]

Thanks for the ideas. Actually, I had to get into the registry to get rid of those icons like help, etc. from the classic start menu, but I've had those gone for a long time. The blue bitmap still displayed along the side. That anomaly remained regardless of which theme I tried and I even used reshacker to look at the bitmap from explorer.exe (it was like #168 or something like that) and the bitmap wasn't damaged. I ended up just system restoring to a few days ago and now it looks fine. I really don't know what it was that was preventing that bitmap from showing up. Very very strange, but thanks everyone for your ideas!

 

[2z]

Just had a look @ my start menu in classic & it did the same as yours

start menu properties - customise -
select show small icons in start menu

that should do the trick