Toolbars I put on the Task Bar disappear with each restart

Yeah! ScottAnderson_WWS, I think you did it! I tried disabling the Language Bar, and now my toolbars stay put through restarts and shutdowns. So at least it works for my situation. Although it seems we have had a couple different variations of the same issue reported here, so I'd be very interested to see whether it does the trick for someone else.

Here are the steps I took:

1. Open Control Panel.
2. Choose Language (Unless you have the Category-style, in which case you choose "Change input methods").
3. Click Advanced Settings, on the left.
4. Around the middle of the settings, uncheck "Use the desktop language bar when it's available".
5. Click the Save button.

I don't know if I said this before, but I type in Japanese sometimes, so I used the language bar too. ScottAnderson_WWS's suggestion is valid, using the touch keyboard. But in my Windows 8.1, at least, I actually have a built in little button to the left of the clock on my taskbar, now that the language bar is gone, that allows me to switch language inputs. And I can also use WindowsKey+Spacebar to switch languages, and Shift+CapsLock when I'm in Japanese to switch between Romaji and Hiragana, and the button on my task bar tells me what input I'm on any which way, like a language bar replacement almost. But I never knew it existed until I turned the Language Bar off. And as I said before, my toolbars are staying put, which is the goal.

Ethan Hayes

I am experiencing the same.

I originally had the Recycle Bin shortcut on my taskbar and it remained for weeks.

And now, on restart, it disappears.

I since added the desktop toolbar and no matter what, it disappears.

I thought back to what I'd changed and the only thing that I had changed was adding the language bar.

I removed the language bar, restarted and now the desktop toolbar remains.

I clicked on my keyboard button on the taskbar (that brings up the virtual touch keyboard) and I have a languages toggle button. I can change languages on keyboard by:

clicking the taskbar keyboard button

clicking the language button on the screen keypad (mouse or touch) and then minimizing the screen keypad

And by doing this, I'm not missing the language toolbar.

I've restarted my computer 7 times and the desktop toolbar remains.

Hope this will help some that have similar problems.

Comment to Microsoft:  Why do you always change/remove the good features with each update.

LEAVE ALONE the toolbars, the start buttons and everything else that we like. It is almost as if Microsoft doesn't field test any of these new products with actual customers before they field...

Doesn't helped for me- its already checked for me.

THE CAUSE

I have 7 computers now running Windows 8.1.   All of the computers have the Quick Launch toolbar added to the Taskbar.  Clean installs of 8.1 were done on 4 computers last November and they have never lost the toolbars.   In late March I purchased a Dell Venue 11 Pro tablet with 8.1.  Soon after adding the Quick Launch toolbar I began to experience problems with the toolbar disappearing.

I have 2 Dell Latitude laptops that had been running Windows 8.0 until late April when I did clean installs of Windows 8.1.  Dell is not supporting 8.x on the older Latitude but does provide the drivers and utilities for the newer one.  The right after installing Windows 8.1 and the Dell utilities I began to experience the same problem with the newer Dell laptop, the taskbar toolbar (Quick Launch) would intermittently disappear.

I found that both the Dell tablet and newer Dell laptop were both using a common utility that places an icon on the taskbar when it starts, Dell System Detect.   On 5/8 I used Autoruns and disabled Dell System Detect on both the Tablet and the Laptop, neither machine has lost the Taskbar toolbars since.