Toolbars I put on the Task Bar disappear with each restart

Update Feb.19, 2015

Seems that, at least for me, getting rid of Kaspersky Internet Security 2015 did the trick. I uninstalled it several days ago, installed BitDefender Internet Security 2015, haven't had a single occurrence of disappearing toolbars since.  

Perhaps some of you are using Kaspersky also? If not, I'd still recommend checking out an alternative antivirus, just to rule out that possibility. Maybe your a.v., as seems to be the case with my previous KIS install, is deleting the user configuration somehow...

I've spent 20 min reading the entire thread and tried several things but I'm still having an issue that may indeed be different... 1) I add a custom toolbar (folder with programs, etc. in it), 2) I change my taskbar to be 2 rows in height, 3) I drag my toolbar to the bottom row so my taskbar icons can occupy the top row, 4) I lock "all taskbars", 5) I reboot, 6) my toolbar appears but squashed over to the right near the tray and all of my sequence settings for that toolbar content are reset to alpha sorted.  I have done the save.bat and restore.bat but that doesn't fix this. It doesn't seem to matter if I'm using one, two, or three monitors or whether I have the taskbar extended fully to all or apply tasks to only the monitor they are running on.  Nuts.  Anyone else with this?

Fixed my own problem.  Although I haven't researched further as to why, I was running a toolbar that was a .exe from HP called HP Support Assistant.  It puts itself immediately to the left of the tray.  My other "folder" toolbar(s) would be to the left and expandable into my double height taskbar.  Anyway, on a lark, I removed the HP Support Assistant as a toolbar (pinned it to the taskbar instead), and bingo ... all better.  I don't know if this same combination of .exe and folder toolbars is causing the rest of you issues but I'm good now.  Hope this helps someone.

ShiffrinPhillip,

The backup/restore .bats don't fix the issue, I said that in my post. It only saves some time.

I don't have the HP Support Assistant; I only have shortcuts for Taskmanager, Lock, Restart, and Shutdown:

I've had this same configuration for over a year and a half, same exact toolbars. Never had a problem with losing them until a month ago or something like that. My wife's laptop has the same shortcuts, set up exactly the same way, same o.s. as mine (Win 7 Ultimate x64), same theme, and hers stay put....

It's really weird. I have no earthly idea what's causing it. Maybe some corrupt system-file. I hope your 'fix' actually works for you, and stays fixed, but I have a feeling that it's just a matter of time before it happens again. Keep us updated, O.K.?

Fixed my own problem.  Although I haven't researched further as to why, I was running a toolbar that was a .exe from HP called HP Support Assistant.  It puts itself immediately to the left of the tray.  My other "folder" toolbar(s) would be to the left and expandable into my double height taskbar.  Anyway, on a lark, I removed the HP Support Assistant as a toolbar (pinned it to the taskbar instead), and bingo ... all better.  I don't know if this same combination of .exe and folder toolbars is causing the rest of you issues but I'm good now.  Hope this helps someone.

I've spent 20 min reading the entire thread and tried several things but I'm still having an issue that may indeed be different... 1) I add a custom toolbar (folder with programs, etc. in it), 2) I change my taskbar to be 2 rows in height, 3) I drag my toolbar to the bottom row so my taskbar icons can occupy the top row, 4) I lock "all taskbars", 5) I reboot, 6) my toolbar appears but squashed over to the right near the tray and all of my sequence settings for that toolbar content are reset to alpha sorted.  I have done the save.bat and restore.bat but that doesn't fix this. It doesn't seem to matter if I'm using one, two, or three monitors or whether I have the taskbar extended fully to all or apply tasks to only the monitor they are running on.  Nuts.  Anyone else with this?

I've had this problem on several different windows 7 & 8 & 8.1 computers for the past few years.

I keep looking for answers and apparently there are lots of bad ideas that simply don't work.

There a few basic flaws in Windows that seem to continue over the years and may never be solved!

Even though none of the "fixes" other users have put forth (registry tweaks, etc.) have worked for me either, I don't consider most of them as 'bad ideas'.... just things which don't solve the issue. Some of them should solve the issue, being pretty solid registry tweaks, but, for some weird reason just do not. 

So far, creating a couple of .bat files to quickly backup/restore the toolbars is the way to go. At the least, it saves you some time and effort. Hopefully, the folks in Redmond will consider it important enough to fix it with an update. I'd say most of them are busy dealing with bigger issues, like Cortana, Windows 10 TP, etc.