Life was fun, life was great, til I made my big mistake

[venta]

All right, all right, I give in. Since re-installing Windows on my laptop, I'm unable to get a few things back how I want them.

I'm running Windows XP Home Edition. All the things I want to do I had working happily before the reinstall, so I assumed that they are at least feasible.

My main remaining problem is with the taskbar. I keep my taskbar where God intended it to be - up the left hand side of the screen. All I require it to contain, beyond little buttons for each running application, is a batch of quick launch icons and the bunch of cack in the systray. In particular, I don't want the "language bar" to appear. And I'd like my task bar to be wide enough to fit icons four abreast in the systray.

Sound unreasonable ? No, I didn't think so, either. I adjust all these things to be true, and I hit lock taskbar. All is lovely. Until the next time I restart my laptop, in which case the language bar is back, and, though the taskbar is the right width, the instant I click on it it reverts to a silly little skinny thing. Is there an extra option somewhere for "and remember what I said even when you get switched off"?

Similarly: where, oh where, is the checkbox to say "don't make my quick launch icons the size of Mexico" ? It's like something from Fisher-Price in here, enormous chunky colourful icons which take up way too much space. I rarely see my desktop (I keep most windows maximised, laptops only have small screens) so I rely heavily on quick launch icons.

I have just, at length, given in and signed into M$ Passport once and unchecked the box for "run at every opportunity you get". And I think I've now located the checkbox Firefox has been hiding from me for the past couple of days. And I've nearly hoovered up all the software I want. So if I can just get that taskbar kicked into shape, things will be looking up.

Update: and one more thing - I'm reliably informed that Firefox works fine with scrolly mice. I have a touchpad, which has a scrolly function - you stroke the right edge of the touchpad up or down, and the screen scrolls up or down accordingly. It works fine in this nice LJ client, it works fine in emacs, for heaven's sake. It doesn't work in Firefox :(

Update2: and lo, that's everything sorted out, barring the weird non-scrolliness of Firefox. Ent LJ brilliant ? Thanks folks.

Comments

[wimble.livejournal.com]

To fix your settings, I'd suggest you log out and shutdown. Which is probably what you've already done.


Quick Launch: find some blank space in the quick launch bar, and right click on it. You should get a menu which includes
View
Open Folder
Show Text
Show Title
Close Toolbar
etc.

View leads to large icons or small icons.

To get enough space to produce this menu, I've had to unlock my task bar, and make it quite chunky. And then I'll have to set it back afterward.

[wimble.livejournal.com]

Actually, if you unlock the taskbar, you get the stipply seperators to the left of each toolbar. If you right click on that, you get the necessary menu, with no resizing of the bars necessary.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes, that seems to work - thanks. Wasn't seeing the right menu at all otherwise, and my taskbar is already hoofing by most people's standards :)

[edling.livejournal.com]

Heh- that's so much easier than my mad moving toolbars around method...

[venta.livejournal.com]

But so much less entertaining :)

[venta.livejournal.com]

To fix your settings, I'd suggest you log out and shutdown. Which is probably what you've already done.

Indeed. Many times :(

[wimble.livejournal.com]

My firefox scrolls happily when I scroll the edge of the trackpad. It makes no difference whether I've got autoscrolling or smooth scrolling turned on or off.

It ought to just be a function of the trackpad: if it's sending the correct scrolly information, Firefox should just scroll. So I'm confuzzled. Sorry.

[wimble.livejournal.com]

Just as a thought: have you tried Firefox, on your machine, with a genuine scrolly mouse?

That will at least identify where the problem lies.

[edling.livejournal.com]

Kinky- I've never really though of moving my taskbar around, just shifted it round and I may get used ot the idea.
Specific stuff:
Can't help on why it reverts on restart- I would reboot my PC to see if it does the same thing, but I'm halfway through a big download...
The language thingy: You looked through the 'Regional and Language Settings' applet in the control panel? AFAIK the language bar doesn't show it's face if you've only got one language available, and with more there may be a way in there to tell it to naff off unless called (the most relevent settings button is greyed out on my box because I've only got one language set up).
Quick launch icon size changing- just been toying, and it looks like you can do it by putting your taskbar in the default (bottom of screen) position, then unchecking the 'Toolbars->Quick Launch' in the toolbars right-clicky, then checking it again, then moving the toolbar back to where you want it. It seems quicklaunch icon size defaults to different things depending on where the toolbar is when you turn the quicklaunch toolbar on (somewhat madly)...

[venta.livejournal.com]

The language thingy: You looked through the 'Regional and Language Settings' applet in the control panel?

Er, no, but I have now :)

US English safely removed from the list, and a mad flurry of boxes unchecked. Hopefully it will now behave. Thanks.

<going for a test reboot>

[uitlander]

There is a right click option either on the language thingy itself or the blank taskbar next to it that tells windows to stop showing it for good. It only works permanently after you've removed the additional language settings. I always do this as soon as I've reinstalled windows, but its been a while since I've had to do that now.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Aye, I'd found the right-click thingy before, but couldn't work out why it wouldn't stay gone.

At least it's better than the last reinstall (done by Evesham rather than by me) where the language was set to US English :)