Window 11 taskbar auto-hide turning off

The latest Windows updates as of this reply are what caused this same issue to now effect me. I have two displays (extended), and I believe that the issue is related to that. The latest updates have caused this issue, which seems to also be in relation to the PowerToys FancyZones utility, There is now buggy behavior in relation to both, and they both happened at the same time, after KB5041080, KB5041169, or the combination of the two. That's about as far as I give a f, but yes, this is still a continuing issue.

I know that no one from Microsoft is reading this, but hopefully this helps other people out there to at least confirm the frustration. FancyZones are totally screwed up at the moment (Windows will not stay in their place), and I occasionally see a message stating "a toolbar is already hidden on this side of your screen. you can have only one auto-hide toolbar per side.". This message always coincides with my taskbar auto-hide disabling itself.

That's about all I have ascertained so far. Without a direct channel for Microsoft support, I can't take it any further.

This might be a solution to blow-out a glitch in the taskbar settings/config in Windows 11:

  TASKKILL /f /im explorer.exe
  TASKKILL /f /im shellexperiencehost.exe
  REG DELETE HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Streams\Desktop /F
  DEL %localappdata%\Packages\Microsoft.Windows.ShellExperienceHost_cw5n1h2txyewy\TempState* /q
  START explorer.exe

Copy/paste these five commands into an Administrator mode command prompt, or dump it into a batch script file. So far so good for me. I haven't been able to force the condition again (which I could recurringly do previously). Will post back if it comes back again 🤞

PS: This won't fix the FancyZones issue I mentioned

This fix did not survive a sleep mode event.

If you're going to post a very technical solution, knowing that 95% of people here are not technical it would be a good idea to include a comment for each line explaining exactly what it does.

My theory is that if you simply created a timed process running, say, every 10 minutes which executes a REGEDIT command to restore the correct setting it would >treat the symptom< (but not solve the problem). Trouble is, I haven't been anything like an "expert" in Windows for over 20 years...

I posted information that someone might be able to work with and expand upon. I did not come here to hold anyone's hand, and I certainly am not maintaining statistics of the technical expertise of the rest of the planet that might be reading this. If you want to expand upon what I added to the conversation and turn it into a looping script, then that is a perfect example of why I posted what I did. It was sharing an idea, not giving instructions for a final documented resolution.

I'll also add that if you (not you personally) don't understand what I wrote, then you should not be using what I wrote. Obviously this isn't an issue that anyone can just fix with a checkbox, and you should not be using anything someone posts online blindly without understanding it first.

I totally agree! I say thanks for posting anything that might be helpful, but quite frankly, if it's too technical or too fiddly, I don't necessarily have the time, knowledge or patience. I thank everyone who has come up with suggestions as to how to cure this miserable bug, but I hold only Microsoft responsible.