So, the other day I ran into an interesting problem when I was trying to pin a program to the Windows 7 taskbar. Usually I just right-click on an open application and say “Pin this program to the taskbar”:
Unfortunately, something happened or I did something wrong and this option is gone! So I tried to drag the icon to the taskbar, thinking it would work, but it didn’t work! Instead, I got a red round icon, which means I cannot drag an item to the taskbar. I thought something was wrong with the registry because I tried to remove the overlaid arrows on the desktop icons and fiddled with the registry. This could probably be due to other reasons, but the point is that there is an IsShortcut parameter in the registry that was somehow accidentally deleted.
In this article, I’ll show you how to fix this problem so you can pin items to the Windows 7 taskbar again! I hope one way works for you. If not, please leave a comment and I’ll try to help. Note, however, that there are some programs that cannot be pinned to the taskbar.
The first method – restore the shares of the shortcut
If you’ve used a program to remove arrows from shortcuts on desktop icons, then the first thing you should try is to restore those arrows. If you have used a third party program, simply use that program to undo the uninstall. Try restarting your computer and then try pinning the program to the taskbar.
The second method – the registry value
Open Registry Editor by going to Start and typing regedit. Then move on to the next key:
– / HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT lnkfile
In the right pane, right-click and select New – String Value (REG_SZ). Name the new line IsShortcut and don’t give it any meaning. This is it. Now restart your computer. Check if you can pin items to the taskbar now.
If you don’t have an InkFile registry value at all on your computer, try some of the other methods listed below.
The third method – perform a system restore
If method 1 didn’t work for you, you can try a system restore. If the problem is recent, recovery will probably work. If the problem persists for a long time, trying to repair may not work if you can’t find it far enough back.
You can read my post on how to use System Restore on Windows if you don’t know how to use this feature.
Method 4 – Enable Pinned Programs on Taskbar
In Windows 7, you can enable or disable the entire Pinned Programs feature. Obviously, it is enabled by default, but it could have been disabled somehow if you had this problem. You can read this post on how to enable pinned programs.
http: //www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/5547-taskbar-pined-programs-enabledisable.html
Fifth method – perform a repair install
If System Restore doesn’t work, you can try performing a repair installation of Windows 7. For detailed instructions, see here:
http: //www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/3413-repair-install.html
Hopefully one of these solutions fixed your problem. If not, let us know and we’ll try to help! Enjoy!
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