Taskbar Freezing/Unclickable

I am running a pc with Windows Vista Ultimate, installed it just about 2 weeks ago. Now already I started getting problems with the same. First when I try clicking the little speaker icon on the taskbar, it freezes my entire taskbar completely. In this time I can only click the Start button and nothing else. Not just this, the another problem started recently is that when I right click taskbar and select properties, it freezes the entire computer. Everything turns into unresponsive with an error saying “Windows Explorer has stopped Running”.

Hope somebody can help me out fixing this. Thanks in advance.

I am having two systems at my home and both are Dell branded. Hey HudSon, is yours too from Dell ? because I think the problem is actually related to the BIOS that comes from Dell. There was a guy on Microsoft forums who have reported that Dell BIOS are not compatible with Vista systems. Well the only way out to fix this problem is to dedicate your few hours on Dell web pages and find out the compatible BIOS for Vista.

I don’t think it is related any how to Dell or their BIOS. But anyways, Microsoft has launched a HOTFIX but in order to get the same you will need to talk MS's technical support directly. I was facing the same and got the hotfix. Now there is no more freezing problem on my system.

Check this Microsoft KB for more info: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/932406/en-us

Hello friends, I got some alternate way to get rid of this taskbar freezing problem. You just need to Log off, and then log on the system. And directly go to restart the Explorer.exe process. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Press CTRL+ALT+DEL.
2. Click Task Manager.
3. Click the Processes tab.
4. Click the explorer.exe process.
5. Click End Process, and then click End process.
6. Click the Applications tab.
7. Click New Task.
8. Type explorer in the Open box, and then click OK.

Thank you so much! It's easy and it works.