none of the icons are hiding on the taskbar, hide inactive icons is ticked in the taskbar & menu properties, can any one please help,
thanks.

Try to uncheck the option, and hit OK. Then go back in and try to re-check the "hide inactive icons" setting. Under the "Customize" button to the right you can setup icons individually to "always show" or "always hide". Might want to check those settings as well.

thanks nexusware00, done all that, can't think what I have done to corrupt it, think I will have to do a ghost, just wondered if there was a way to fix it before I did do a ghost

Well if you have an error or corrupted file, a ghost won't help. If it's truly enough to bug you, you can repair before you try anything big. Or if it's a recent occurrence you can try a restore point first.

That is definitely a weird problem bigray. I wonder if something in the registry is messed up?

Check out this link...it might help. This is the registry setting, but use at your own risk .

Automatically Hide Inactive Tray Icons

Thanks for the link to what looks like a great site for registry info. Wasn't looking to hide inactive icons, but it looks like there is lots of info on other things here so I put the site in my Favorites folder. Thanks again!

thanks nexusware00 that seems a great site, following day did a ghost every thing working OK
thanks to everyone

Thanks for the feedback bigray234. You are always welcome