How make Windows 7 task bar to look like Vista

by Andrew Cherry

I’ve seen some people complain that they don’t like the changes to the taskbar in W7 and would like their taskbar to be like Vista, but haven’t seen anywhere how to do this.

1. Set the task bar to small icons and “combine when taskbar is full”.

2. Unpin all the pinned items from the taskbar

2. Right click the taskbar and click on “Toolbars”

3. Create a new toolbar and create a new folder called “Quick Launch” for it.  I created my under “C:\Users\<user>\Quick Launch”

5. With “Lock the taskbar” turned off, drag the toolbar to the original position, by the start menu. Then uncheck “Show Text” and “Show Title”.

6. Open up the Quick Launch folder and add your shortcuts to it, and you’re done!  Mine looks like this:

I’ve included a zip file with the two Vista shortcuts – the first one is “Shows desktop” and the second “Switch between windows”.