General Chat

i swear there is a little man in my husbands laptop that spends all night jumbling things up.
every day it is switched on something else has changed but the
latest little 'joke' is driving me insane.
i think what is called the sidebar - where the details of volume, time and date are - it has moved from the side of the screen to the bottom, now if i attempt to scroll down to the bottom for any reason this pesky 'sidebar' pops up and covers half the screen. can anyone please tell me how i put it back to the side , this is on vista if it makes any difference
thanks
maureen

Maureen- if no-one comes up with the solution it is possible to click onto 'System Restore' and it will put it back for you. This happened to my neighbour's laptop a few months ago. I did a restore and all was fine. However a couple of weeks later I got my computer magazine Comp*ter Active and it explained how to correct the mistake without doing a system restore. I have had a quick look but cannot find the right issue, perhaps someone else might just have the issue at hand. If not just click onto System Restore and choose a date when you know everything was ok.-jl

You can left click on the bar with your mouse (up down arrow will pop up) and move it and then right click and lock it so it stays right at the bottom of the screen or go to your control panel (it will be in your list re all the bits and pieces on your computer) and either the words task bar will pop up or you can type the words Task bar in search your control panel and then you can custom it to be hidden, along the right side or wherever.

Quite hard to explain to someone in layman terms.

Persie

hi persie
thanks for help.
gone to control panel and found icon for taskbar, i am then given options of lock/unlock (it is unticked so unlocked) or auto hide , keep on top of others windows. on instructons for moving taskbar it says click on empty space and then drag and lock.
dont understand what it means by empty space, clicked all over the bar but cant get it to drag
maureen

You should be able to left click onto the bar on the line where it meets the rest of your screen and then move it... you should be able to do that with any little boxes etc that come up on your screen so you can move them out of the way. Therefore left click and then drag by holding that click down you will get a little arrow that goes up and down..

However your task bar instructions should also have a little box where you can scroll through where you want to put it .. says taskbar location on screen and you have a choice of bottom, left, right or top (sorry there is no choice of sending it to your neighbours up the road) Make the change and save it. Most things on a computer- there are two or three ways of doing things.

Persie

Hullo Maureen........if what you call the side bar is actually the blue taskbar, it normally IS at the bottom of the screen. to move it, right click on a portion that has no worsd/boxes in it and you'll get a popup showing among others,' Lock the taskbar'. if you want to move it, untick 'lock the task bar', now on the plain portion again left click and you will be able to drag the bar to either side of the screen or top or bottom.....
now get the popup again and now tick the" lock the taskbar"
you can also select autohide which means that the bar descends until you put the cursor on it!!
simples...............EEEEk!

Bob

Maureen are you okay with your task bar now? Or do Bob and I need to try and explain further?

sorry everyone, friends turned up and that was the end of that.!!
i thought i had solved things, or at least with the help of persephonei managed to do what i set out to do - move the thing to the side. but ive gone from bad to worse, its seems so sensative, only have to go near it and out it pops and now it covers the red x close button, minimize buttons.favorites ect.
yes,bobtatian, on my normal computer i can click on any icons on desktop , drag and shuffle them about where i want them but on this laptop i can click and drag the things but as soon as you let go they spring back to where they came from - thats the icons on the left of the screen.
my husband assures me that the icons that are on this bar were always on the right of the screen and there was no bar they just sat there all the time.
system restore doesnt seem to want to know - so simples NO

Maureen,

I dont understand why you appear to want the bar at the right side of the screen?

the clock and other running icons are usually at the right side of the bar......the start box,and.other programs' icons may be sited towards the left side of the bar( assuming that the taskbar is on the bottom of the screen.....)these are called Quick launch icons which basically means ONE click and they will startup........
if it is popping out, then you have autohide ticked, untick it and the bar will be visible ALL the time.
Bob

like most things, Maureen, once you know how to do it.........it IS simple, getting the hang of it.........is well, sometimes hard going.........

Bob
i dont want the bar anywhere really, it just suddenly started jumping up from the bottom of the screen covering about a quarter of what was on there. the clock etc were down the bottom right of the screen and as you say, start etc was down the bottom left, but there was no bar keep getting in the way, i thought if it were moved from the bottom to the far right where the screen was void of icons it would solve the problem - not thinking about what would happen when i oponed up anything. so in regards to your suggestion of unticking autohide -i will then be back where i starte from wont i?
maureen

Maureen, if the bar is too wide then put the cursor on the outside edge of the bar, and you should then get a double headed arrow, use this to drag the bar to a sensible width, just abit wider than two lines of this text.....but you will only get that if you have unticked "lock the taskbar".......


thats because I think you had it on auto hide.......to correct that, right click on a blue bit of bar and select properties, you then get another bigger popout box where you can do/undo the auto hide bit
Bob

Bob
many many thanks - all ok again thanks to you.
its strange how you look at things every day and not really take it in, i knew something had gone wrong with this bar but didnt really know what. its now on the right and i have narrowed it down and its fine.
my daughters boyfriend stepped in at the last moment and helped his boss out by working all over last christmas, as a thank you he gave him 2000.00. as a surprise he blew the lot on a cruise for the 2 of them to the ffords in norway, they left on thursday and he didnt tell her about it till sunday so you can imagine all the excitement going on. the ship has got a cam corder on the bridge and i was really looking forward to watching it, id put it in favorites and then planned to minimize it and keep going back to it, then this b..... bar turned up and you can imagine what i was saying to myself.
so thanks to you i can now sit and watch the waves and a bit more i hope.
maureen

glad all is well, you are welcome. good viewing from now on!! ;-)

:-)