Taskbar / quick launch icons screwing up in Vista

Ok, I'm having a problem that I occasionally had in XP, but I'm having it a lot more in Vista. I know of a way to correct it (temporarily, at least, in Vista) but I don't know if there was ever a fix for it in XP or Vista.

I've just bought my SZ6 with Vista Business on it, and I've loaded a few programs on it in the past week, but it's been occurring before and after I started installing programs.

Here's the scenario:

The computer has usually been running for an extended amount of time - usually at least an hour or more - and has either gone to screen saver, sleep, or both, but on at least one occasion it did it before going to screen saver (which tells me it's not to do with switching operation modes, but actual run time).

Ok, the problem...when I look at the taskbar and quick launch icons, they appear as if they have been reloaded (like at startup) but have been moved over far to the left, overlapping each other and distorting the images. Usually it's windows tabs or IE tabs that are overlapping the start button and icons. When I move my cursor over to where an icon should be it appears through the imagery mess and appears normal, as well as if I move my cursor down the line through the icons and windows tabs all the way to the time. However, if I minimize a window, open a new one, or perform any similar kind of task it reverts back to how it was before.

My temporary solution...if I ctrl-shift-esc into task manager and view the "processes tab", I click on the "explorer.exe" and end process it, which causes the taskbar and anything else on the desktop associated with explorer to disappear. Then if I click into the "applications tab" and then on the "new task..." button, I type in explorer and it restarts and looks and works as it should. (I originally end-tasked explorer by accident, but later on found it effective to fix this occasional problem on XP)

I only ever had to do this on XP a half dozen times or so, usually because of something I did to get it out of sync with itself, but on Vista it's a once or twice a use (or more) that I have this happen. I will post some pictures of it the next time that it happens so that I can prove that I'm not crazy (as I'm sure some of the other early Vista users were telling Microsoft as well).

Thanks in advance for any help you guys can give me.

 

Anyone have any ideas about what may be causing this to happen?

I think I've narrowed it down to a p2p program, Ares, that I'm using, but it's never happened to me when I've used it before Vista (meaning it didn't seem to affect my desktop with XP even though it occasionally did this too). I will probably uninstall and reinstall Ares later today to see if that has an effect on the problem.

But still give me any other ideas that you think may have caused this as well. Thanks.

 

Im Having The Same Problem With Ares To And I Have A Brand New Hp Notebook With Vista Home On It

The Only Solution I Found For It Was To Uninstall It But Then I End Up With No P2p Program

I Hope There Is A Fix For This In The Sp1 For Vist

I Never Had A Problem With This On My Xp