Taskbar Auto Organizing?

Mulsiphix · 05 Dec 2009

I noticed today that my Win7 taskbar is doing something new. I don't remember it happening before and I've been using this for over a month and a half now. What is happening is that when a program is already open (say Notepad) and I open a second instance of Notepad, the new Notepad window opens directly to the right of the current Notepad instance. I'm used to new windows/instances being opened at the far right end of the bar with no auto-sorting whatsoever. Is it possible to disable this behavior?

logicearth · 05 Dec 2009

It has been doing that since the first beta release...you just now noticed? o.o

Offsprung · 05 Dec 2009

I am actually enjoying this one. Along with the ease of pinning/unpinning. Depending on current project I pin what I need rather then navigating the new clusterF of a start menu each time.

Mulsiphix · 06 Dec 2009

Does anybody know what the feature is actually called (only been using Win7 for a week btw)? I know it isn't Grouping unless it is considered an extension or addition to Grouping behavior.

Offsprung · 06 Dec 2009

Right click on start button...task bar...taskbar buttons
Combine has 3 options.

Mulsiphix · 06 Dec 2009

I have it set to never combine but this behavior is still present. I've tried switching between the options just in case another program changed whatever registry value or setting that controls this. Still no luck. What is killing me is I can't even find a mention of this feature anywhere on the internet.

EDIT
I found this spreadsheet created by Microsoft which details the Group Policy Editor settings functions and what each setting actually changes in the registry. Listed in here is "" which affects the taskbar grouping functionality. When I set the key it described to be active (versus default) the grouping setting in my Taskbar settings was grayed out completely. I think we can safely rule out that this functionality has anything to do with Taskbar Grouping feature.

Registry Location
1. HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer
2. Create New DWORD (32-bit) Value: NoTaskGrouping
3. Set ValueData to "1"

Taskbar Preference Window After Change Is Applied

Offsprung · 06 Dec 2009

Works on mine, no reg editing.

Mulsiphix · 06 Dec 2009

It works on mine as well. I'm saying that if I get into the Registry and disable grouping, then the option becomes inaccessible. The point of sharing that info is to prove that the application auto-sorting has nothing to do with the Taskbar Grouping feature in the taskbar preferences menu.

Offsprung · 06 Dec 2009

I see, I misunderstood. But even xp does that, do not know of a way to disable that.

Mulsiphix · 06 Dec 2009

I used a heavily tweaked version of XP for over five years. I had disabled the majority of services and done a lot of tweaking with various programs when I first installed it. I never had this behavior which is why I'm noticing it now. Time to plow through old XP feature press releases and articles on the internet. Maybe I'll get luck and find this feature has a name.