Task Manager Tabs and Menu Bar Missing or Disappear

When opening or running Task Manager, the Task Manager top-level menu bar and tabs may be missing and disappeared from its window. Typically, Task Manager has the menu bar which has File, Options, View and Help pull-down options, and various tabs to display and show details on Applications, Processes, Services, Performance, Networking and Users. The problem is now all these menus and tabs are gone missing.

Actually, the clean Task Manager with ‘missing tabs and menus’ user interface is not an error nor a bug. In fact, it’s a feature of Windows Task Manager to run in tiny foot-print compact mode. In compact mode, not only the menu bar and tabs are hidden, the top and bottom window border frames which contains Minimize, Maximize and Quit/Exit buttons and status bar also go into hidden and not visible.

In fact, anybody can cause Task Manager to go into small footprint mode by simply double clicking on the empty space around the border and empty space in the border around the tabs of Task Manager. The area to double click to switch to tiny footprint mode is illustrated in the figure below in red color.

Full Mode Task Manager

To revert and restore Task Manager to default full mode and get the menu options, tabs, status bar and other buttons back, just double click on the empty area around the border of Task Manager window again. See illustration below with area in blue for the location to double click.re the red-mark is present).

Small Footprint Task Manager

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 17th, 2009 at 11:48 pm and is filed under Tips & Tricks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

22 Responses to “Task Manager Tabs and Menu Bar Missing or Disappear”

  1. Saurabh
    December 5th, 2009 13:22
    22

    thanks very much….it worked

  2. sanjay kumar
    December 4th, 2009 14:34
    21

    hi!!
    thanks a lot, it really work for me..
    thnkx again.

  3. Chadley
    October 31st, 2009 06:59
    20

    Good work Geezas. This was doing me nutter in. Sorted now from top notch advice. Lovin ya work. Sweet as.

  4. Cassie
    October 29th, 2009 10:45
    19

    thank you for that tip ….. feature ugh?

  5. nrb
    October 24th, 2009 10:55
    18

    Thank you so much, that was very helpful. I really thought my windows has gone nuts :) .

  6. Jesica
    September 2nd, 2009 22:58
    17

    Thank you! You saved hours of frustration!!!

  7. James cassett
    August 26th, 2009 05:28
    16

    Another THANKS for the info!

  8. Barnay
    August 22nd, 2009 01:28
    15

    Cheers worked as described, I thought is was some kind of malware

  9. Abdullah Khan
    August 19th, 2009 21:01
    14

    thank you very much :)

  10. farbod
    August 19th, 2009 09:28
    13

    But mine is still missing the shutdown menu

  11. Staci
    August 16th, 2009 03:10
    12

    Thank you! This has been stressing me out for almost two days now!

    So easy! WHOO HOO! I was afraid it was memory-related or from a virus!

    Back in business…
    Thanks!

  12. Michael
    July 15th, 2009 14:11
    11

    Thankyou. All other suggestions were around registry hacks and virus removal. Who knew it was actually a feature?

  13. Vedderist
    June 6th, 2009 08:30
    10

    Cheers for that. what a strange thing to have. Microsoft are quite odd at times.

  14. EMitchell
    June 3rd, 2009 15:26
    9

    Thanks and regards. A toggle switch in the Task Manager’s system tray menu could have saved me a few days of frustration.

  15. Scott
    May 20th, 2009 21:02
    8

    Thanks! Everyone I asked about this in my IT department thought it was a memory problem with my PC.

  16. het
    May 19th, 2009 02:38
    7

    Thank you so much

  17. b
    April 27th, 2009 12:28
    6

    thank you

  18. christie
    April 4th, 2009 13:46
    5

    Thank you so much! Your instructions are so clear and easy for anyone to understand! You fixed my problem in less than 2 minutes! THANK YOU!!!

  19. nilso
    March 9th, 2009 04:07
    4

    thank you very much. nice.

  20. Krishna
    March 2nd, 2009 04:07
    3

    Hey,it solved my problem.Thank you.

  21. nathan
    February 13th, 2009 22:28
    2

    nice

  22. haider_up32
    January 18th, 2009 06:14
    1

    u tried hard to get it back

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