So, I can’t seem to get my taskbar to auto-hide. I have Auto-hide checked in the taskbar properties, but it won’t go away. I’m assuming this is because whenever I have a window open, the “active program” icon on the left of the taskbar is highlighted and keeps it open.
This is obviously annoying. With it constantly open, I can’t see web page load status or mail status, or really, anything that goes on along the bottom of the screen when I have a window in full-screen mode.
Any solutions?
Nothing?
Serious question, did you restart your computer after checking off the auto-hide taskbar thingy?
Hmmmm…I really don’t know. But I’m going to give it a try now. 
One thing I’ve noticed is that certain things in the system tray seem to keep it from auto-hiding sometimes. Like if there are updates pending.
And then sometimes, it just seems to quit working for a while, but I’ve never figured out the cause. Not very helpful I know, but I can sympathize!
Yeah, see, that’s the thing. It stops working after a while. I guess I’ll just need to restart more often, because that appears to have fixed it.
Told ya it was silly. Thanks, Bees.
OK, so mine got stuck again today and I couldn’t reboot while things were running. Was driving me nuts so I did a bit of research; it’s been a while since I looked at this last.
The problem seems to be caused by messages in the Notifications getting stuck. Especially after Windows Updates.
So the first thing to try is to open the Notifications popup from your system tray at the right end of the taskbar. Check to see if you have any updates pending or other messages. For instance, I think today’s problem was caused either by Windows Updates or by a McAfee warning. Apparently APC is pretty bad about this, also, if you’re running on one of their batteries with software.
Any rate, sometimes you can get it to go away by reading the messages.
Another thing to check is to be sure you don’t have any unresponsive programs. If an app gets hung, sometimes the taskbar will freeze to let you know there’s a problem. Generally that one should go away once you’ve maximized the app window and maybe clicked on any popups.
If none of that works, then try restarting your explorer process.
WARNING WARNING WARNING DANGER WILL ROBINSON: This can break some things if they’re running, so don’t have anything going on. Apparently it can also cause some apps to stop putting an icon in the system tray. And who knows what else. So don’t come crying to me if things go wrong.
DISCLAIMER: TRY THIS METHOD AT YOUR OWN RISK. I AM NOT A COMPUTER REPAIR TECHNICIAN, NOR DO I PLAY ONE ON TELEVISION OR THE INTERNET. YOUR MILEAGE MAY VARY. IT AIN’T MY FAULT IF YOU BREAK YOUR COMPUTER. DON’T CALL US WE’LL CALL YOU.
Open the Task Manager and kill the explorer.exe process. If you’ve got more than one explorer.exe process, I’d try the one using the most memory first. Or all of them, whatever ya wanna do. Once explorer is shut down, click over to the Applications tab and click New Task and type “explorer” in the box & OK. (Or use Start-Run to get the same box.)
That should do it.