Windows 7 Taskbar – Fixing Duplicated Pinned Icons

taskbarwindows 7

For some applications that I pin to the taskbar, the icon gets duplicated when an instance of the application is running.

For example, in the screen shot below you see there are two icons for VMWare Player (icons all the way to the right).
Windows 7 Task Bar Image
The first (left) icon for VMWare Player is the one I pinned to the task bar.
The second one (right) is linked to the running instance of VMWare Player.

If I start another instance, then gets grouped with the second icon. For most other programs (like Google Chrome in the screen shot below) the running instances just get grouped with the original pinned icon.

Can I make VMWare Player behave the same way?
Why does it behave differently anyway?

Best Answer

Two possible reasons and a solution...

Reason 1

I believe it something about do with the program not taking advantage of Windows 7 features (or APIs). Since this may be the case, Windows thinks it is two different programs. You will have to wait until VMware Player updates its software to take advantage of this new feature. This is the same problem I once had with Google Chrome. After a Google Chrome update, it was resolved.

Reason 2

Another reason, you could have pinned the shortcut of the file instead of the actual program. Find actual program, then right click it and select Pin to taskbar.

Temporary Solution

If the first reason is the case then here is a temporary solution. Open up the program, so that you have duplicate icons. Then right click the duplicate icon (the new one) and click Pin this program to taskbar. Next, right click the original and select Unpin this program from taskbar.

Related Solutions

Windows – Can you change the icon of a pinned IE 9 web application? And how do you do it

Start with the site already pinned and no instances of IE running.

Open the folder:

%appdata%\microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\User Pinned\Taskbar

Launch notepad and drag the pinned icon from the folder into notepad.

The InternetShortcut section should have two entries (IconFile and IconIndex). If they do not exist they can be added. A DLL or ICO file can have multiple embedded icons. The IconIndex number is used to determine which embedded icon to use.

[InternetShortcut]
URL=http://www.superuser.com
IconFile=c:\windows\system32\shell32.dll
IconIndex=12

Save the changes and close Notepad. At this point the icon change is done, however, the taskbar won't refresh automatically.

To refresh the taskbar:

Cut and paste the shortcut to the desktop. If the icon does not remove from the taskbar, right click and select "unpin..."

Double click the shortcut on the desktop (this forces IE to read the .website format and refresh the icon).

Drag the desktop shortcut to the taskbar and delete the desktop shortcut. The new icon should be shown.