Task bar won't come out of hiding

Taskbar

In XP, locking taskbar does two things:

First, it locks the taskbar size and the options for areas shown, such as quick launch, etc.

Second, it locks the active program icons that are shown in the active porgrams indicator area next to the clock. This is nice for a situation where XP hides the Folding At Home cog for the graphical client, when it is always running and not often USED-- for instance.

I have been able to lock the taskbar hidden, when set to autohide, in two ways:

First, some APPS has an always-on-top option for THIER main window. These can keep the taskbar from going always on top-- and always on top does not mean always unhidden, it means on top of other windows. When an app and the taskbar fight for who is on top, taskbar might indeed be stuck. See if it is only a couple apps that cause this. for me, has been mostly older apps that do this versus the taskbar.

The second way is actually an appearance-only lock. set taskbar to not be always on top. Run one of the apps that likes to be always on top, maximized. When you activate the taskbar's unhide, it will be layered UNDER the app window, AKA BENEATH it. It unhid, app is ON TOP of it as far as what you see (in Z plane, layered on top of it on desktop).

Easiest way to handle this is to "restore down" window of apps that want to be always on top, size to as much of full screen width as you want, then drag up so you have clearance for taksbar to rise showing as blank desktop. I ended up doing this for an old Mozilla, an old OpenOffice.org, an old WinFax Pro, and a few misc other things.

BTW, when you dynamicly reset the taskbar, the settings can be in DYN_Data keys. Sometimes, easiest way to get them to commit after one reset is to log your user off, then log back on. Many desktop settings are COMMITTED to permanent keys this way, or by a Windows restart. I think Microsoft had lots of XP learners tell them that they had messed up thier desktop accidently way too often, and put in a multiple same settings code set for commit, or a user logoff and login or restart of windows to get things commited beyond current user session, as it is easier to say "restart Windows" than to fix the things that happened in Windows 95 like all important icoms missing from desktop because they had been DRAGGED off of it literally-- in that case, the fix was to auto-align them, but one heck of a surprise when your 4 year old got curious and made your icons get dragged OFF the desktop, things like My Computer, etc, and AFAIK what Microsoft did in response was to deliberately have XP not save some things until user convinced it that this was not an accident, or forced a commit with a restart or user logoff and login after changing what they really did want to stay set.

This would be consistent, 95 and up have done commits this way for years, and XP actually has to have this happen LESS than 95 did to get settings commited right. Also, note that the desktop settings as far as customization are PER USER ID, and not universal.

HTH.

John D.

 

Thanks John and Carl. Good information. Why didn't I think of the possibility of another programs "window" being set to always be on top. Of course that would cause a conflict but I would think that Microsoft would make sure they would prevail over such a fight

In any case I will be alert to this "struggle" and report back when I have something to say.

Thanks....

 

Taskbar corruption

Hi everybody!

This thread has opened a way for me to solve a really serious problem of disappearing Taskbar in Windows XP Professional; therefore: thanks Jim78418 for opening the thread and thank you very much Daizy for indicating so efficiently the route toward the solution! I also send my very best regards to all other staffers and MVPs (Newt, Johanna…) whose help, care, competence, attention and patience with us, ordinary users, can never be overemphasized!

Several times before I faced corruption of the Taskbar, which always occurred in the same way: the Taskbar would become unstable, with its sections (Quick Launch and Language bar) unpredictably skipping over each other, just upon hovering the mouse pointer (the arrow) over them or clicking them. Then the core part of the Taskbar, the taskbar itself (which normally shows running programs) would eventually disappear, degenerating into a second Language bar (in the Toolbars list). Turning off this second Language bar would definitely remove the central (and the most important) part of the Taskbar so that no running program would be represented there anymore!

Last time an apparently smooth installation of the Office XP SP3 provoked this Taskbar buckling and put me in a rally big trouble: I performed System Restore but that resulted in an unrepairable, un-upgradeable, un-deinstallable and even un-reinstallable Office XP, according to the message that I received from the Control Panel’s Add or Remove Programs applet! So the only cure, lest reinstallation of the operating system, was deletion and then recreation of the affected user account (fortunately, other user accounts were not corrupted)!

I didn’t try that precious Kelly Theriot’s Taskbar Repair Tool Plus! (# 298 in his list), which you indicated Daizy, but I’m confident it will spare me a whole day of work should a Taskbar (and the pertinent user account) gets corrupted in a PC that I administer. Thanks a lot again!

Srecko Vojvodic, Salamanca, Spain

 

Group hug!
Welcome to the boards CarlJStoneham ,jdii1215 and SVojvodic. So good to have you all here.

What a wealth of information this thread has procured. Good job everyone.

Daizy

 

Just like the pink Ever Ready Battery Rabbit, uno the pink one.... still running. No problems guess I'll need to update this thread

 

It almost doesn't feel right when things are going too well, does it?!

 

I've had the problem with maximised windows hiding the auto-hidden taskbar on every version of Windows from '95 right though to XP. It's just something I've learned to live with. Simple solution? Don't maximise windows, but drag the top, left and right-hand borders to the edges of the screen, and drag the bottom to within a small distance from the grey line indicating the hidden taskbar. Workaround? Hit the Windows key.