Member Avatar for james.lu.75491856

Why is my taskbar like this?

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Dani AI

Generated

Several replies in this thread (notably and ) pointed toward appearance/settings as possible causes. For cases where those quick checks don’t fix the look, the following targeted diagnostics address the most common, less-obvious causes: corrupted icon cache, a hung Explorer process, profile-specific corruption, or a third‑party visual/shell tweak.

Steps to rebuild the icon cache and restart Explorer (Windows 7):

Open an elevated Command Prompt, then run:

taskkill /f /im explorer.exe
cd /d %userprofile%\AppData\Local
del IconCache.db /a
start explorer.exe

Run System File Checker from an elevated prompt to check for corrupted system files:

sfc /scannow

Additional checks and safe diagnostics:

  • Boot into Safe Mode to see whether the issue persists; persistence there suggests a system-level problem, disappearance suggests an installed extension or driver.
  • Create a separate local user account and log in; if the taskbar looks normal under a new profile, the original user profile may be corrupted.
  • Review installed programs for shell‑replacement or UI‑tweak utilities, and temporarily uninstall or disable them.
  • Update/reinstall the graphics driver and confirm the display scaling (DPI) is at a standard value (100%/96 DPI) for testing.
  • Make a Restore Point before any registry edits or manual file deletions; if major corruption is found, consider a repair install.

A concise troubleshooting order: Safe Mode → new user test → icon-cache + Explorer restart → SFC → driver/third‑party checks → system restore/repair install. This follows the concrete prompts in the thread and moves from low‑risk fixes to heavier repairs while preserving data.

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All 7 Replies

Member Avatar for james.lu.75491856

It looks weird

Edited by james.lu.75491856
Member Avatar for caperjack

yup your right it does

Member Avatar for Rik_

It looks loke aeroglass has stopped working. What desktop theme are you using and have you tried setting a different one?

Member Avatar for bradly.spicer

Am I going to be the first to say I kinda like it :3

Member Avatar for MidiMagic

Windows 7 is weird.

That is the large icons version. You can set the taskbar settings by right clicking on the taskbar.

Member Avatar for Reverend Jim

What am I missing? Aside from having a different icon for the start button it looks fine to me. Please be more specific than weird.

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