Minimized Apps appear on Win7 Desktop instead of in the Taskbar

Question

Until today when an application was minimized its icon was still on the Taskbar. To return focus to the program I would simply click the icon on the Taskbar.

Today, minimized applications now appear as minimized windows taking up desktop space. The Taskbar functionality has not changed. (See below.)

Why are minimized apps now showing as a small window on the desktop? More importantly, how does one restore things where just the Taskbar icon represents the application?

Solution

I have had the same problem just now. I believe it is a disorder caused by explorer.exe. What I did to fix it without restarting the machine, is to kill (or end) the process "explorer.exe" in Task Manager, then re-run it again [File>New task (run..)]. Hope that helps!

Comments

[Grant]

Have you tried right clicking on the window frame and manually selecting minimize just to see if that works?

[Richard Ogg]

I've not changed anything in attempt to fix, and a reboot will need to wait for some completed work first. Right-clicking on the frame does not give me a pop-up menu. Left-click on the icon gives the standard pop-up and minimizes the same.

[Scott Chamberlain]

I have seen this behavior when Explorer.exe gets out of whack, I bet a restart will fix it too. If it persists after a reboot please update the question with that info.

[Richard Ogg]

Thanks, Scott. In reality, one should always reboot before posting problems on sites such as this. It appears a reboot fixed it. (It still seems very weird - a flashback to yesteryear....)

[Parakram Majumdar]

I had a similar issue and didn't want to reboot the machine. Restarting explorer.exe using the task manager worked for me.