Windows 7 - Taskbar Always On Top - Disable or Enable

Hi

Same here on Window 7 Home Premium 32 (6.1.7600.16768)

Thanks for a great fix. I'm baffled that it should be necessary, but really appreciate you time and effort!

First, thank you for working on a fix to Disable Taskbar Always on Top in Windows 7. Great job !! (I wish I knew enough to do it myself.)

The latest fix works for me at Work but not at home. I get the same message "Unknown Explorer version (6.1.7601.17567), can't apply patch." message as posted by Matt Dralle (message #160). I am using Win 7 Pro 64.

Where is the best(??) place to post a message to MS to resolve this issue ?? It is beyond me why they needed to remove/disable(?) this feature.

Thanks
John

Hello guys

I just registered to write about my experience. As a HUGE Windows XP fan who had to switch to Windows 7 for several reasons (3D-glasses), I changed the look and feel to old XP-style. That includes using the classic theme and even a "classic taskbar"-program. Finally I put my taskbar from the bottom to the top of the desktop. I was happy with this solution until I found out that auto-hiding the taskbar has an annoying nervous fade-in/fade-out-effect and not hiding the taskbar keeps all the windows hidden under it - well, that's why we are all here.
I was so glad finding tweaker's program and I must say that it works with my Windows version, despite all the updates. BUT: I have completely irregular windows crashes at startup saying "explorer is not responding - start again / wait for response". When I start again taskbar is auto-hiding and tweaker's program is gone. I have to restart windows, maybe it works, maybe it crashes again.
I know, my Windows desktop seems to be a bit exotic but have any of you experienced the same? And could there be a solution?

Thanks for reading
Stefan

Darn I was hoping this tool would be updated by now. Maybe the person can release the source code if it's not being updated? I'd be happy to make the necessary changes to its code.

I'm running Win 7 Home Premium 64, and I tried the app (with all the latest Windows updates installed), and I also get the error "Unknown Explorer version (6.1.7601.17567), can't apply patch". My taskbar is on the left of the screen (I have a wide screen, turned in portrait mode, so a side-taskbar makes most sense for me).

In the mean time, I have an annoying temporary solution that I use. I use an AutoIt script that I have to run every time I've used the taskbar. It is annoying but at least it works. The script has one line:

WinSetOnTop("[CLASS:Shell_TrayWnd]", "", 0)

I've created a compiled version of the script and pinned it to my taskbar. After I click the script, I have to click the window bar of a window to get that window to move back over the taskbar. And if I resize a window, I have to resize it from the right, because resizing it from the left causes the taskbar to go over the window again. If at any time I click the taskbar, I have to click the pinned script again if I want the windows to move over the taskbar again.

My attempts to script it so that the taskbar is sent to the back regularly or when certain actions occur, have failed so far, sorry.

leuce: There are a couple AutoHotKey (very similar to AutoIt) scripts that are available in this thread, one of which I wrote, that sound like they do better than what you have achieved. If you don't like the behaviour of those scripts, particularly, you might still learn some techniques by reading their source code.

I think I've tweaked mine some since I last uploaded it, but I haven't achieved the "perfect" solution yet... but it has been workable for me.

Yes, I saw two of then. The one written by you didn't do anything, and the one written by seventab works as expected, but... it doesn't keep the taskbar visible all the time (only when you press the shortcut, and only if you don't click anything else). I want the taskbar to be visible all the time (it is my launch panel, so to speak, and I need to see it).

Well, what do you actually want to achieve? Windows quite successfully keeps the taskbar visible all the time, if that is what you want, without any helper programs or patches.

Perhaps my phrasing "visible all the time" was a bit misleading. The fact that it must be visible does not mean it has to be "on top" (i.e. in front of all windows).

Essentially I want the Win XP behaviour. In Win XP, a side taskbar behaves slightly different than a bottom taskbar. A bottom taskbar in XP (i.e. one that is not set to auto hide) will always be on top of any window that overlaps it, but a side taskbar will always be underneath any windows that overlap it. Even if you click the taskbar (i.e. to give it the focus), the taskbar will remain underneath the windows that overlap it. If a window obscures something on the taskbar, the only way to get to that element on the taskbar is to minimise the overlapping window or to move it out of the way first.

In Win 7, if you click the side taskbar, it moves to the front so that it is on top of the windows that overlap it (i.e. those windows then move to behind it, obscuring some of their content). This means that if you have a wide taskbar and a narrow screen, your windows will all be partially obscured by the taskbar (or will have to have horizontal scroll bars). Many web sites are now designed for a wider screen, so it is not practical to use a narrow web browser simply because the taskbar is in the way.

Samuel

Hi Samuel, Thanks for the explanation.

I'd never noticed any difference between bottom or side XP taskbars, when other settings when the same (Auto Hide ON, keep task bar in front OFF are my favorites on XP); I've used (still do, on my netbook) XP with side taskbars since the day I discovered them!

OK, so Windows 7 doesn't expose a control for putting the task bar behind other windows, but Tweaker apparently figured out where in Windows 7's Windows Explorer executable set that setting, and for quite a few versions of W7WE created versions of his program to patch it, and they worked well, but I've no idea what happened that he quit doing it, but by now it seems obvious that he quit. Whether he'll resume at some future point is uncertain.

The AutoHotKey solutions attempt to do the same thing as Tweaker's patch, but externally... finding the Windows Task Bar windows, and sending them commands to not be AlwaysOnTop: but Windows keeps changing that back, so there is a little war going on between the AutoHotKey program, and WE, and various situations seem to alter who wins the battles.

I've uploaded my latest win7taskbar-gl.exe (and the zipped .ahk source, separately), give them a try. But I know they are not perfect.

When ImgBurn (for example) updates the burn status in the taskbar, using its taskbar widget (what are those called?) as a progress bar, then it seems nearly impossible to convince the taskbar not to be on top. Now it is somewhat understandable that a progress bar in a task bar that is hidden underneath other windows wouldn't be too effective at keeping you informed of progress... and the taskbar-widget-as-progress-bar feature of Windows 7 might be a reason M$ took away the "Keep on top" checkbox.

There are a few other times when, although the taskbar is told to get off the top, it is impossible to click the window that had previously been on top, and bring it back on top... but I have discovered that switching to a third window (in a different application), and then back to the previously on top window, is a workaround to get it back on top. Usually.

Besides these two types of scenarios, my current program, which borrows liberally from seventab's and my previous one, is a fair workaround to the problem... enough so that I haven't spent additional time developing it, or trying to tweak it to be more perfect.

I have few windows that must truly be the full width of the screen, even with web sites better handling wide screens, there are different sizes of wide screens, so they can usually adjust to something a bit smaller that "Maximized"... I very seldom have maximized windows, because then I would only see one window on each screen, and I usually have a dozen to three dozen windows open concurrently...