Windows 7 taskbar overlap problem

Hopefully my attachment went through, but basically when clicking the home button for the start menu, the taskbar overlaps it and makes all my applications impossible to read. Is there any way to keep this from happening? I have killed explorer.exe and restarted it as well as going through all taskbar settings and moving to all four sides of the screen. It will still always cover some portion of the start menu. Thank you for replies.

I wonder if having the Taskbar vertically on the left edge of the screen instead of horizontally on the bottom makes the difference? The menu doesn't seem to follow the same orientation as the Taskbar. I see a similar issue but my menu is on top of the Taskbar.