Tell me about it! I’m trying to get my taskbar in XP to stay the way I want it, which isn’t hard, three icons wide with no language bar (my taskbar is on the left side of my screen vertically, instead of horizontally on the bottom). No matter what I do, what I sacrifice to the XP gods (flods), how nice I ask or how mean I yell, the taskbar has a mind of its own. So sorry I don’t have any solution for you, but I do sympathize with wondering why my taskbar has a mind of its own, and am dismayed yet not surprised that they didn’t fixed this in Vista. Could it be that your taskbar is set to autohide icons that aren’t used in a certain period of time? Maybe that option could be disabled in some preference menu for the taskbar, possibly by right clicking and exploring the Properties options.