While the taskbar is one of the most common part of the windows interface that is facing various bugs and errors, I think it will be a good idea if the maker of this tool can also do a fix for those bugs like:

missing icons in the taskbar

open programs not showing in the taskbar

icons randomly appearing and disappearing

entire taskbar missing

Although you can find the solutions here: http://windowsfix.org/how-to-fix-windows-taskbar-errors.html ….It will be a hassle to do it all manually everytime.

I googled UserPreferencesMask to try and find out what the registry fix does… Microsoft’s Technet contains an article on it here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc957204.aspx however from this article it seems like the values changed are “reserved for future use,” leading me to believe that changing them either should have no effect, or that Technet is misinformed.

I went ahead and made the change, then end-task’d Explorer, restarted it, confirmed the problem was fixed (it was), then attempted to create the problem again by the method given in other comments here – right-clicking a program in the start menu – and lo: it has not manifested itself. I’m a skeptic by nature, however, so I wouldn’t be surprised if I noticed the error again several hours from now :P

If you have SP2 you can reproduce this problem by going to Start Menu->Programs->going to any item and right-clicking to “properties”. Your tooltips would then appear behind the systray. Upgrade to SP3 and no longer happens.

Here is yet another fix, written by Jerold Schulman for an article that appeared in Windows IT Pro magazine and also in SQLServer magazine, May 12, 2006:
http://www.sqlmag.com/Articles/Print.cfm?ArticleID=85856

It is a batch file named FixTTbTB.bat that you run from a command line prompt with a F or U switch. The syntax is: FixTTbTB F|U
(Where F fixes the problem, and U undoes the fix.)

(** I have copied the contents of the batch file at the end of this message.)

The batch file sets the value of registry key
HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop\UserPreferencesMask
to either 90320780 (“fix”)
or 9E3E0780 (“undo”)

This fix appears to work, by changing the values of the first two hex words 90 32 to 9E 3E. (I cannot find documentation for the values of this registry key, so I don’t know exactly what the 9E and 3E do — maybe someone here can answer this?).

**NOTE** — The value of 9E3E0780 for “Undo” is the default value of the key on a fresh Windows XP installation..

However, before running this batch file, you might want to check the current value of the key in your system:
I just noticed that the value of this key, on several of my XP computers which have been in use for awhile, differs from the Microsoft default, so the key has apparently been changed by other things that I have run on my systems. E.G., here are the values of the key in three of my computers:
be3e0780,
be3e0580,
9c120380.

So you might want to check your current key value and use that as the “Undo” value in the batch file instead of the Microsoft default one.

** FixTTbTB.bat contents:
—————————————————–
@echo off
setlocal
if {%1}=={} goto err
set key=”HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop”
set switch=%1
set switch=%switch:”=%
if /i “%switch%” EQU “F” goto fix
if /i “%switch%” EQU “U” goto undo
:err
@echo Syntax: FixTTbTB F^|U
:end
endlocal
goto :EOF
:fix
REG ADD %key% /V UserPreferencesMask /T REG_BINARY /F /D 90320780
goto end
:undo
REG ADD %key% /V UserPreferencesMask /T REG_BINARY /F /D 9E3E0780
goto end
—————————————————–

I right-clicked on the taskbar, chose “Properties”, unchecked “Keep the taskbar on top of other windows” and clicked the “Okay” button. Then I went back into the taskbar properties, put the check mark back next to “Keep the taskbar on top of other windows” and clicked the “Okay” button.

Now the tooltips are displaying as they should and the taskbar still displays on top of other windows.

I’m running Windows XP Professional SP2.

There’s really no need (at least in my case) for the overkill of an extra utility. Thanks for the info, though.