Remove taskbar with registry in windows 7

Question

I'm trying to permanently hide my taskbar. I'd rather not use a different shell or use software to do this for me, so editing the registry seemed a natural choice. Searching the web a bit, I found some guidelines designed for Windows XP.

These guidelines told me to do the following:

[-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\StuckRects2]

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer]
"NoSetTaskbar"=dword:00000001
"NoTrayItemsDisplay"=dword:00000001
"HideClock"=dword:00000001
"NoToolbarsOnTaskbar"=dword:00000001
"NoTrayContextMenu"=dword:00000001
"NoSaveSettings"=dword:00000000

All of these things seemed to apply to Windows 7 too, so I tried them out. The bottom six settings work fine and removed or disabled what they were meant to remove/disable, but the StuckRects2 key seems to reappear, together with what remains of the taskbar (start button, opened programs, and a button to show desktop).

So are there any more keys that I have to specify to completely remove the taskbar, or is another easy solution (without software/shells) ?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Sorry for misunderstanding your query,

The only way to do this would be to completely and entirely stop using Windows Explorer, and use a custom shell to "replace Explorer completely." This means you would no longer have the usual start menu, Explorer windows, etc, and would have to rely entirely on some other piece of software for browsing your file system (I understand that it is not what you prefer, however regedit would not be a total solution to this). Some people do this, and there are replacements available, so if you really want to completely eliminate the Windows taskbar, find and use one of these of your choice.

In order to completely replace Explorer, and have your replacement be the default shell which opens up when you log in, create a REG_SZ value called Shell in [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon] using the registry editor. This will "completely replace explorer" for your account, making it unnecessary to use any taskbar hiding/killing techniques.

There is already a SuperUser question discussing the various options.