Windows 7: W7 Taskbar appearing over Full-screened items when using 2nd Display

Hi guys,

For years now I have been using multiple displays with reasonably little trouble when fullscreening item such as VLC whilst using the secondary display.

I just built a Windows 7 PC and it appears to a problem i've not encountered before.



When I full screen an item in my main display and click on my secondary display the taskbar appears over the full-screened application. (item stays full-screened from top to bottom but taskbar is now present) This never use to happen before on my Vista machine and I assume there is something quite simply i'm missing?

I can sort of alleviate the problem by 'auto-hiding' but this isn't ideal as you can still see the the taskbar slightly which is a distraction when watching video.


Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Right click UR desktop, select "Screen Resolution" and under "Multiple Displays" choose "Extend These Displays" and your taskbar will revert to appearing on the primary monitor alone...

That setting is selected; it's how I have the second monitor independent to first screen.

Maybe I have misunderstood?

I'm not sure I see the problem, or perhaps I haven't understood what you mean. If the monitor used for full screen work has the taskbar in it then just open the full screen program on the secondary monitor instead. Alternatively swap the taskbar to the other monitor by reassigning primary and secondary...

I know I can just drag the program across and also the taskbar if I wanted to either screen and but I generally have DisplayFusion running a 2nd taskbar so dragging the real taskbar across whilst using it causes that problems.

My 2nd monitor also is in portrait and is primarily for web browsing so using that for video isn't ideal.

Is there no way to de-activate the taskbar from doing this? If I click on the full screened video it doesn't appear yet moving the mouse to other screen and clicking does. It doesn't make sense to me and doesn't happen on Vista so is it a problem/feature inherent to Windows 7?