Solved taskbar screwed up after switching monitors

[jltskfl]

Hello. This is a weird one. I cannot find any mention of it anywhere on the net.

I am running Win 8.1 and just switched to a 4k monitor. Everything is fine with the exception of the icons in the taskbar for open programs.

I have the settings set to never combine, and use large icons, and I also have quick launch toolbar on. This is always the way it has been set on this computer.

See if you can follow me on this: If I have six or less open program windows, the buttons in the taskbar all appear the size of a small square box as they would if they had been combined, even though they are supposed to be the full sized normal rectangle.

If I have MORE than six open windows, the width of the taskbar buttons is suddenly absurdly wide, as in the taskbar will only show two of seven or more taskbar icons. This is a 4k monitor, so if the taskbar were working correctly, the screen taskbar from left to right would be able to show probably twenty taskbar button rectangles for open programs due to its large size. With this problem one taskbar icon is literally about fifteen inches wide. In addition, the screen only shows the right-most active icons. That means the five first icons are pushed waaaay off the screen to the left. Windows is using some erroneous taskbar button left starting position that is literally several feet off the left side of the monitor.

If I try to resize the taskbar and make it smaller (compared to the quick launch bar) by dragging the taskbar tab to the right, shrinking it, as the space for the taskbar gets smaller, the buttons then get smaller and also come into view from the left until they can all be seen, but by that point they are all so small that they are little squares again. In other words, the bigger I make the taskbar from left to right, the wider the buttons get and they scroll off the screen to the left badly, while the right-most button stays fixed, but gets larger.

Changing screen resolution does nothing to help. Turning off the quick launch also does nothing. System restore did nothing.

Changing the settings to combine taskbars makes it work correctly with the left spacing issue (and the small square icon buttons that default with that setting), but I don't want to run in combine mode, I want separate program taskbar buttons.

I've never seen a problem so weird.

Thanks in advance for any input on this.

 

[jltskfl]

I fixed it! I went in and set the

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics MinWidth​

to 52, and then 300. Both forced Windows to stop using some unknown erroneous taskbar starting position that was far off the left side of the screen. Adding more open windows does make each taskbar button smaller, regardless of the "MinWidth" setting giving the impression that the taskbar buttons will never be smaller than that setting.