How To Make The Windows 7 Taskbar Work More Like Windows XP\Vista

The most visible change in Windows 7 is the “dock style” taskbar, which shows icons instead of buttons, with all application windows combined within a single button.Now some may ask “How do I turn it off?”, and this article will show you just how to do that.

                 


Changing the Windows 7 Taskbar to XP/Vista Style

To revert back to the older style, you’ll need toright-click on any open area of the taskbar and then choose Properties from the menu.

                                        

From the Taskbar buttons drop-down menu, you’ll choose “Never combine”, which will make every window show up as a separate button on the taskbar, or you could choose “Combine when taskbar is full”, which does what it says.

                   

Now you should see the buttons show up with text labels like you are probably used to in the Windows 7 style.



If you chose the “Use small icons” checkbox in the properties screen, the taskbar will shrink to look very very similar to Vista.


The only problem is that the “pinned” icons still sit on the taskbar, which isn’t the same as Vista or XP, but you can easily remove all of them by right-clicking and choosing “Unpin this program from taskbar”.
                              
Now the taskbar looks and works very similar to Windows Vista:



If you wanted to squeeze maximum performance from your PC, you can choose the “Windows Classic” theme under the Desktop \ Personalize section, hence reducing visual effects and eye-candy to the bare minimum.