Windows Taskbar Repair - Start Button Blinking, Taskbar Hides Only Partially

Windows Taskbar Repair - Mission Accomplished. Okay so I had this problem with Windows Taskbar. Vista Desktop Taskbar that is. Suddenly I noticed with my laptop (Acer 5570Z) that the start button was blinking occasionally and that the windows taskbar would not fully pull out. I had previously set the taskbar to auto hide to save valuable screen space when not needed. This feature worked beautifully with Windows Vista.



Well all was fine until the day the Windows taskbar started being annoying with the Start Button blinking when the taskbar was pulled off screen. Sometimes, the vestige of the taskbar would stay on screen and I would have to pull the taskbar back from hiding to restore a good screen picture. Annoying.

But I found the solution. Okay again, here are the symptoms:

1/ Windows Vista on a laptop, the desktop taskbar set to autohide.
2/ Suddenly the start button starts to blink (in place)
3/ Suddenly the taskbar does not pull out of the screen fully like it should. This is random, sometimes it pulls out partially, sometimes more other times less. Creates ugly image when not pulled out.


And the solution? Simple. Well, really this is not a solution, but a workaround. I will leave the solution to Microsoft.


THE WORKAROUND - Windows taskbar repair

I noticed that the above desktop taskbar problem only happens when the taskbar is set to autohide AND the network icon is DISABLED. So the workaround is simple. ENABLE the network icon. To do that,


1/ Right click on taskbar, select Properties

2/ Click Notification Area tab, make sure you CHECK Network
3/ Click OK

Problem solved. The problem is repeatable for me, I can go back to the problem whenever I uncheck Network. And now that I know Network is the problem, I remembered I wanted to take that off... I hardly have network disconnects, and the icons were taking up valuable space on the taskbar...

What about you? Has this solved your problem? Find the comment area below and let me know if this solution helped. Even if it didn't, let me know anyways. Maybe we can figure something else out.

So go ahead leave me a comment!

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yep this fixed it for me, however I have the feeling this is a symptom of a deeper lying problem. Perhaps a faulty graphics card or drivers.

Disclosure said...

Anon, Thanks for your feedback! I have a feeling you are right about the deeper problem with drivers, graphics, or even Vista OS.

We may never know!

Glad the solution helped with the Vista taskbar repair.

I wonder if this problem occurs in Win 7 as well.

Anonymous said...

“What the?!?” was my reaction when I located this post.

There are various systems at this site. One of them runs Windows Vista 64-bit SP2 (WinNT6.0.6002 64-bit SP2). This system’s Taskbar began this past weekend demonstrating the exact same symptoms you described. For the exact same reason you decided, that there is almost never a LAN connectivity issue, I also decided to disable the Network system icon in the Taskbar Notification Area. Please believe me when I say that I exercise fairly good change control on all systems. Because it was so minor a change, I did not think to log it in my change control log for this system. I was at a total loss as to why, even after manually rolling back any other logged, minor configuration modification I did to the system, why Taskbar auto-hiding was still problematic. Thank you for this post.

I would like to add that it really is solely 1) Windows Explorer (explorer.exe), 2) enabling Taskbar auto-hide, and disabling the Network system icon. After finding this post, I experimented with pre-Vista Explorer mode, Vista Explorer mode, Vista Explorer with Aero Glass mode. These Taskbar symptoms are independent of all the modes. All that is required for me to duplicate these symptoms is to disable the Network system icon.

Again, “What the?!?”

Thank you!

Disclosure said...

Hi Anonymous, Glad you found this amusing and useful.

And thanks for summarizing it in 3 words ;)

Anonymous said...

Thank you ! It worked.

Microsoft dropping the ball like always when it comes to OS.

Anonymous said...

Actually, I have that flashing Start Menu button on my Vista desktop but it's not because of the Network check box. I had an icon blinking in the Notification Area and when I stopped that process, it cured the blinking, even with Auto Hide.

So sounds as if it's not a bug, but a feature . It blinks when there's something in the notification area that's blinking, that you wouldn't see if the Taskbar is hidden.

In my case anyway --- I can't imagine what the Network has to do with it??

Anonymous said...

Thanks! I will try this.

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