Windows 7: Taskbar has inherited taskbar problems

This computer is about a year old now and it's starting to feel like the old one. The taskbar often locks up even though it's set to autohide and conversely often fails to appear when I mouse over the bottom of the screen (gotta hit the Windows key). It's kind of random, and going to properties and resetting everything doesn't fix it.

It probably most annoying in Internet Exporer because when locked up it hides the message bar popup that shows at the bottom when you download or need to give permission for something.

This was a major aggravation with my old XP machine and I had kinda hoped it would be resolved in Windows 7. Not? Is there a fix?

A work around is to not auto hide the task bar. Not a fix but at least a temporary solution.