See if THIS LINK helps.

 

No, unfortunately that just talks about the same tweaks that are in TweekUI. I'll keep searching, although I'm getting the feeling that what I'm asking is impossible!

 

I still haven't found anything. Basically what's happening is that I have my taskbar set to 'autohide'. This increases my desktop space and I often have programs I'm running at full screen. When someone IM's me, thier box tries to steal focus and instead flashes the taskbar. So then the taskbar POPs up on top of my full screen program, hiding what I'm working on until I click the IM.
So I'm really interested in finding a way to stop the taskbar from 'unhiding' itself. Please help!

 

Have you tried Microsoft's TweakUI? There's a function there under General-Focus that might help.

Just another thought, you could also try resizing the taskbar to the bottom of the screen, and it will appear as a grayline, then use autohide, and it won't look like its there.

Also there is a free app called TaskbarHide which hides the taskbar but the Windows key will still acitvate the Start Menu. The only problem is that when I tried it (ages ago) there was a gap between the bottom of the screen and the edge of the maximized window (where the taskbar would normally fill).

The only other thing would be to change the transparency of the taskbar so that you can still view the window through it when it pops up.

 

Some good ideas Gazman! I will give them a try.

 

ah, ok the transparency thing worked. I used a program called AlphaXP Lite to change the trans. of the taskbar to full and now its gone completely even if it tries to steal focus.

odd that there's no registry setting to prevent that otherwise - you have to use a workaround.