It's not entirely obvious how to get the Windows 7 taskbar to appear like XP's with the Quick Launch bar, so I thought I'd post a little tutorial on how to do it.

The first two options are if you prefer the original Win2k look without the vista shinyness.

1. Right click your desktop and select 'Personalize':

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2. Select the Windows Classic theme:

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3. Now right click on your taskbar and select 'Properties':

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4. Select 'use small icons' and under the 'Taskbar buttons' pulldown menu, select 'Never combine'. (I don't know why Microsoft is forcing combined tasks under one taskbar button on us. It's stupid. 2 clicks to get to another window when it could be one? stop wasting our time!). Now click OK.

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5. Right click on your taskbar again and select 'Toolbars' then 'New Toolbar'

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6. Under 'Folder', enter this (with quotes): "%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch"

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7. You'll now have a button on your taskbar called 'Quick Launch'

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8. Right click your taskbar and uncheck 'Lock the taskbar' to unlock it.

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9. Extra menu options have now appeared, right click on the 'Quick Launch' button you added and uncheck 'Show Text' and 'Show Title'

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10. You'll now probably see just one Quick launch icon:

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11. This part can be slightly tricky, grab the bar on the left of your task bar items and drag it all the way over onto the quicklaunch icon that you now see (in my screenshot it's onto the firefox icon). Doing this will cause the quicklaunch buttons to jump over to the left side of the task bar.

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12. Resize the quicklaunch bar how you like, and right click the task bar and lock it again.

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13. Enjoy your XP style taskbar with Quick Launch in Windows 7

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