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.

I’ve tried everything. I did a reboot just now and I show two caps lock icons, two scroll lock icons and one num lock icon (duplicates happen too). And it’s only on MY Windows account. On the other two accounts I have on this computer, it shows up right.

I have now removed the check from “Hide Icons When Not In Use”. I don’t know what that will do, but we’ll see. For the caps lock key, num key, etc., that’s a program from HP that came with the computer. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling to no avail.

And I NEED those keyboard icons, especially when I type in a password that shows dots instead of letters.

Did you try messing with the settings?
Right click Taskbar > Properties > Notification Area

because vista sucks. :-) sorry this post is no help at all.. have you scaned for spyware, malware, trojans? sometimes they can install icons as “recorders” to once you click them, record keypresses, programs and sensitive info.

Vista does suck, can’t wait for Windows 7

@MrGeneVan and @Kiev749, yes and yes.