Windows XP: How to Modify the Size of Taskbar Items

Article by George Norman (Cybersecurity Editor)

on 08 Jan 2009

The annoying thing about opening a whole bunch of applications, files and folders is that they will clutter the Windows taskbar. Things kickoff with a few tabs to the left of the taskbar (assuming of cure you left it in its default location, which is the bottom of the screen), and by the time you’re done opening your millionth folder you will find that the taskbar is so cluttered that you can’t find anything anymore.

The thing is that your Windows-based operating system is by default set up to allow these taskbar items to take up a certain amount of space; there is a maximum allowed size and a minimum allowed one. Since you are the kind of person that is into desktop customization, here is a simple method that you can employ to modify these default values.

Follow this basic step by step plan which I’ve tried to make as simple as possible so that any newbie could follow it:
- Press the Start button on your keyboard (the one with the Windows logo on it).
- Click “Run” and type-in “regedit”. A window called Registry Editor will pop up.
- In the Registry Editor go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER -> Control Panel -> Desktop -> WindowMetrics
- Double click on MinWidth (or MenuWidth in my case) and change the default value according to your own needs and tastes.

According to gHacks, the default value of 154 pixels should be changed according to your monitor’s resolution: 724 for 1024x768, 724 for 1280x1024, 1000 for 1280x1024, 1620 for 1920x1200. As a rule of thumb, you should subtract 300 from your monitor’s resolution and insert the resulting value. In order for the changes to take effect you are supposed to reboot your machine. Please note that this tweak only works on horizontalyy displayed taskbar tabs.

If you would further like to enhance your Windows XP operating system perhaps you would be interested in some means of achieving Vista functionality in XP.


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