Setting the view of the toolbar to Large icons creates a gap in the Windows 7's taskbar

Question

If you add a custom toolbar in the Windows 7 taksbar and set the toolbar view to Large Icons (and the icons in the toolbar are not set to Use small icons), the height of the taskbar unexpectedly increases by around 5 pixels, which makes a rather stupid gap at the bottom of the screen. If the option Use small icons is used for the taskbar appearance, the height of the taskbar is normal.

The normal situation, when there is no custom toolbar and the toolbar height is 40 pixels:

The abnormal situation, when there is a custom toolbar with the Large icons view: Notice the added space, i.e. a gap, between the bottom of the screen and the bottom line of the rectangle around the Google Chrome icon. The height of the toolbar should remain the same as in the first screenshot.

It appears that the programmers at Microsoft were not very meticulous while designing the Windows 7 UI here; it is obviously a bug. I was wondering if there is a registry hack to fix this or if anyone knows any solution to the problem, except for the obvious one: "use the small icons"? Thanks.

Answer 1

I have a similar situation to one you described. I had essentially 2 rows at the bottom when using my own toolbars and I had changed the taskbar icon size to small and then back to large. I found that by removing all my task toolbars from visibility altogether from the taskbar, restored the taskbar's height back down to it's normal single row height. I was then able to reselect my toolbars and all is well now still at 1 row of height for my taskbar. This worked for me and maybe could help someone else.