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A weird occurrence started happening a few days ago on my PC running Win7, namely all the programs that I have pinned to my taskbar are now nowhere to be found when you turn the PC on - the left side of the taskbar is completely empty, with the start menu orb only.
So first, when you tried to pin anything, though (be it a program that had been there previously or something completely new), they all magically reappeared - all my icons, in the right order that they've always been in. When you restart the PC, though - the same procedure had to be applied or you were stuck with an empty taskbar again.
Thus, I've tried emptying the shortcuts stored in %AppData%\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\User Pinned\TaskBar to see what happens - curiously, now after restart, the bar is still empty but if you pin something new, nothing reappears - and this would have been understandable if it weren't for the fact that under %AppData%\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\User Pinned\TaskBar all the old shortcuts... came back on their own. They just appear out of the blue with every restart, even if you empty the folder but they don't reappear on the taskbar anymore.
What may be the reason and how to fix it, then?
Straightfw
Posted 2017-07-02T20:30:46.910
Reputation: 223
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One person here claims it was caused by a Video Driver update.
– DavidPostill – 2017-07-02T20:39:41.573@DavidPostill - thanks a lot - it wasn't caused by video driver update in my case but rather a problem with Bitdefender's ransomware protection module (just like in the Os in the link you provided's case). As soon as you turn it off, problem disappears - I guess if I tweak it some more I'll be able to pinpoint which folder set as protected is causing the issue specifically but at least now I know where to look :) Thank you. – Straightfw – 2017-07-14T15:51:00.493
No problem. When you pin it down please add an answer :) – DavidPostill – 2017-07-14T15:52:07.210