Task Bar occasionally won't Autohide

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My taskbar occasionally refuses to autohide, which can get very annoying. This issue has been raised repeatedly in other forums, with no real solution. A very similar problem has existed in Vista and XP for many years.

Currently, my own problem seems to be caused by one particular open program: if I close programs one at a time, the problem will go away when the offending program is closed. But it’s not always the same program. Most recently it was Adobe Photoshop Elements Organizer v8. As soon as I closed it, the taskbar hid itself. Re-opening the program did not cause the problem to immediately recur.

Various solutions which don’t help at all, or don’t work consistently, or solve the problem only temporarily, have been proposed on other forums:
— uncheck “lock the taskbar”
— reboot
— re-install OS, either from scratch or via an older image
— uncheck autohide in properties, apply, re-check autohide
— check for virus
— turn off anti-virus or other security software

/Dave

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That ranks right up there with the weirdest annoyances I’ve ever heard of. Top 10 for sure!

To reset the Taskbar, open the Task Manager, click on ‘Processes’ tab, highlight ‘explorer.exe’, click on ‘End Process’. Then click on ‘Applications’ tab, then click on ‘New Task…’. Type in “explorer.exe” (no quotes) and click OK. Close out of Task Manager. See how long that lasts.

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As soon as I closed [the program], the taskbar hid itself.

David:

This tells me that the application was requesting focus without flashing the task bar button. At least, that’s why it would happen to me in earlier versions of Windows. When the task bar won’t autohide, have you tried bringing each window to the foreground, either by Alt+Tabbing or clicking on each task bar button?

That said, I did run into a situation in Windows 7 where, even after bringing each program to the foreground, and even after closing all programs, my task bar was stuck on visible until I rebooted. Truly annoying! I don’t often use my 7 installation yet, as I’m still building it, so I can’t offer much more from my own experience.

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David:

This tells me that the application was requesting focus without flashing the task bar button. At least, that’s why it would happen to me in earlier versions of Windows. When the task bar won’t autohide, have you tried bringing each window to the foreground, either by Alt+Tabbing or clicking on each task bar button?

That said, I did run into a situation in Windows 7 where, even after bringing each program to the foreground, and even after closing all programs, my task bar was stuck on visible until I rebooted. Truly annoying! I don’t often use my 7 installation yet, as I’m still building it, so I can’t offer much more from my own experience.

I have the same problem. It’s not a taskbar item; it’s a tray item. Killing and restarting explorer.exe works but many of the tray icons don’t come back because their programs fail to refresh them after explorer.exe is restarted.

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Additional information:

Bringing each application to the front with ALT-TAB or by clicking taskbar icon had no effect – task bar still won’t hide.
Killing and restarting explorer.exe using task manager does indeed fix the problem (taskbar now hides properly – but I’ll bet it is temporary. Stay tuned!

My taskbar occasionally refuses to autohide, which can get very annoying. This issue has been raised repeatedly in other forums, with no real solution. A very similar problem has existed in Vista and XP for many years.

Currently, my own problem seems to be caused by one particular open program: if I close programs one at a time, the problem will go away when the offending program is closed. But it’s not always the same program. Most recently it was Adobe Photoshop Elements Organizer v8. As soon as I closed it, the taskbar hid itself. Re-opening the program did not cause the problem to immediately recur.

Various solutions which don’t help at all, or don’t work consistently, or solve the problem only temporarily, have been proposed on other forums:
— uncheck “lock the taskbar”
— reboot
— re-install OS, either from scratch or via an older image
— uncheck autohide in properties, apply, re-check autohide
— check for virus
— turn off anti-virus or other security software

/Dave

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I’ll uncross my fingers. Thanks for the additional information, Dave.

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So far, when this has happened to me, it’s always been something needing attention. In my case, it’s usually an Outlook appointment or Task reminder popup, which are easily seen. The first couple times it was something in the tray, er, notification area, I forget what. It was hidden, I had to click “show hidden icons” to see what it was, and attend to it.

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