Items pinned to taskbar and clock are missing after upgrad

((why give me space for a title that is bigger than the number of characters I am allowed to enter?))

I finally took the leap last week and installed a new HD and installed win8 64bit on it. I've been using it and accessing my old apps on my vista drive as well. Today Windows encouraged me to upgrade to Win 8.1, which I did. Now, all the stuff I painstakingly pinned to my taskbar is gone. I have tried to repin it but it says it is already pinned. I have unpinned and repinned, but it still does not show up. In addition, the clock is missing.

I'd really like the use of that desktop/taskbar back. Any ideas?

To get the clock back:

notification area - How do I restore the tray clock in Windows 7? - Super User

For pinned items, try opening the program & right click the icon for it in the taskbar & choose pin to taskbar.

A picture:

Hi Kahtana,

Welcome to the Forum!

You could try clearing your pins using the method this tutorial has to offer:

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/9610-taskbar-pinned-apps-reset-clear-windows-8-a.html

Then try adding them again.

Cheers,
Harry

Hi all, thanks for the suggestions.

The first option to toggle the clock on/off failed. The clock is apparently there, just invisible. It had a black box over it for a while. Disturbingly, all the other icons in the task notifications are greyed out meaning I can't adjust them, as if I somehow lost my admin rights during the upgrade.

I ran the batch file to reset and clear the pinned apps and lost the taskbar entirely as well as any response from any corner of the screen - ie, windows died. For some odd reason chrome stayed, so I am able to type this response. I am completely dead in the water now. Going to power down the machine by hand since I have no way to do it otherwise.

Hi Kahtana,

Sorry I have moved house and have no internet so my replies are going to be sluggish! have you got an update since you have restarted your computer?

cheers,
Harry

What does it show for Date Format in Control Panel > Region? Also have you tried a sfc /scannow in a Command Window as Administrator, to see if it fixes the issue? Someone may come along with the registry setting to fix this.