Need Help: Taskbar Buttons Missing, all quick launch icons expanded to the right

Hi everyone!

I joined this community to get a solution to my problem that came up yesterday. I have a Toshiba laptop with Vista Home Premium installed. In the course of my work, my taskbar buttons for my running programs suddenly disappeared. The quick launch icons all showed and expanded to the right with the dotted separator beside the start button visible but the second dotted separator after the last quick launch icon which you can drag also disappeared. System restore did not work and always resulted in errors. Now, I'm just using alt+tab to change windows but I'm not used to it and is uncomfortable for me.

Any suggestions Friends on what I should do? I hope you can help me with my problem.

Where do the windows go to when you minimize them?

Not really sure where but the direction when I close the windows which I opened from alt+tab is going down towards the start button.

I have the same problem as the one posted in this link: http://help.wugnet.com/windows/Taskbar-buttons-disappear-ftopict560236.html but it is for XP. Hope this extra info helps. Thanks for the immediate reply Sir!