Taskbar does not Auto-hide all the time Windows 7

Anonymous

**Original Title**Windows 7 taskbar won't consistantly autohide. After changing the properties to Autohide and clicking 'OK', it hides for a brief second then reappears. Other times it autohides as desired.

My taskbar autohide behaves in an erratic pattern. When I have an alert, it autohides after resolving the alert, but other times it refuses to go away, even if I, once again, open the properties, uncheck autohide, recheck autohide, then click 'apply' and/or 'OK'. As I type this, the taskbar stubbornly remains!

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Anonymous

In the "good old days" applicaitons would often un-hide the Taskbar so their notification icons could show an updated status and they could ensure it would be seen. I think this method has fallen out of favor, but older applications that haven't been updated could still be sending the commands to the system to show the Taskbar. Is it possible that you have an older app in the notification area that's affecting the Taskbar as described?

What notification area icons do you have (and what versions)?

For what it's worth, I just tried disabling Avast Pro 5.0 and it still allowed the Taskbar to auto-hide.

-Noel

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Anonymous

Hi Lamargene,

Welcome to Microsoft Answers.

See that “Lock the Taskbar” is not enabled. If it is, you may disable it by right-clicking on taskbar and unchecking it.

Still the same behavior?

If such is the case, I’d recommend you to download Microsoft Security Essentials on your computer. This will make sure that any virus, spyware or other malicious software on the computer is wiped out completely. Also if the weird behavior is due to any one of those, running the essentials will fix it.

Download it from

http://www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials/

Do you see any changes after running the essentials? Post back and let us know.

Regards,

Shinmila H - Microsoft Support

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437 additional answers

Anonymous

2015-04-07T19:38:55+00:00

Going to task manager and exiting out of explorer (which I didn't know was running) did the trick! THANK YOU because the task bar was driving me crazy!
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Anonymous

2015-04-16T14:27:21+00:00

Would anyone still have the link for the Vista program?? It's nowhere to be found and this **** is driving me CRAZY! Get your **** together, Microsoft!! :(

Killing Explorer is NOT an option. For you will have to run trayrestore.exe (which not ALWAYS works...) to get your system tray icons back...

Grmbl.

Sign me up for the same problem, and it's actually quite annoying,

Unfortunately the only way to get your taskbar to properly hide again (and I don't mean uncheck the "Keep the taskbar ontop of other widows" option for a quick fix) is to restart the machine so that Windows resets the tooltip balloon status. What a pain!

Thankfully through my inability to let it go and hatred for this problem I have written a file that will fix this! (Works great on my Vista machine!) All the program does is overwrite the phantom tooltip balloon and then clear the tooltip balloon and Tahdah!

The tooltip will stay up for 10 seconds so that you can read the info on it (just telling you what it does and how you can contact me if you have any problems). You can close this tooltip balloon like any other by clicking on it, or if you mouse over the program tray icon it will close itself instantly.

http://www.multiupload.com/94SQZ50YK0

And here is a pic of how it looks in action.

http://i44.tinypic.com/1hzzn.jpg

I really hope this helped.
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Anonymous

2015-04-27T19:41:23+00:00

After reading (some) of these 37 pages I am happy to announce that I have solved this 6 years old issue (at least for me)!!! I want a medal of honor from Microsoft.

So first the bug; from time to time the taskbar does not auto-hide, and there is no other solution but to restart windows. When does that happen? When an usb drive has been nastily removed, without clicking on the "Safely remove hardware" icon in the notification area. The drive is gone and the icon is gone with it, but it must still be crying for attention somewhere as it prevents the taskbar to hide. It is 100% reproducible.

How to get rid of that annoying behavior? Click on taskbar notification area arrow, customize, in the window that appears look for the “windows explorer / safely remove hardware and eject media” (an usb connector with a green tick mark icon) and select hide icon and notification. Et voila! You can continue to unsafely remove your usb drives without messing up the taskbar.
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