Ahhh, I understand. I know all too well the annoying little things that change for no apparent reason that nobody seems to know how to fix without significant work that makes you just want to wipe out and start fresh!

My mom's XP box has a very annoying habit of simply not showing all the taskbar options. There's no arrow, it just simply doesn't show them all. I've done quite a bit of research, and there's all sorts of weird fixes like disabling plug and play or installing software that will delay application launches at startup. None of them worked, so she pretty much just has to live with it until she gets a Mac