Hi. Thanks for your response. The taskbar is present. The start button is there for about 1 second after startup, then disappears. I have run this both in a window and in full-screen mode, and it makes no difference. Nothing happens when I hold the mouse over the bottom of the screen. Pushing the Windows button brings up a box called administrator which contains "All Programs", the icons for My Computer, Control Panel, Help, etc. I haven't used XP for a long time and can't remember if this is the normal box that comes up when the Start button is pressed.
The main problem I'm having is that the manual I'm using requires Adobe Reader to view some of the diagrams in it, but I can't see in the above box that I even have a browser installed to get to the internet. Is that even possible to do using Player? I am very unfamiliar with it.
Thanks for your help.