One annoying feature of XP is the Language Bar. This is the little toolbar that opens at the bottom of your screen and has no apparent purpose (Microsoft Windows XP - What is the Language bar?). Since it takes up valuable space on the Taskbar I want to close it. I do this very often because I am constantly installing fresh copies of Windows to test the daily builds of Visual Studio 2005. And When I am not flattening my own boxes I log onto terminal server machines that get  automatically refreshed with the latest build each week. The first thing I do when I log onto a new machine is turn off the language bar by right-clicking on the taskbar and unchecking the Language Bar. I didn't really give it much thought after that, but I started to notice that it would come back. At first I thought I was losing my mind and I couldn't remember which machines I turned it off and which ones I hadn't. I started to pay closer attention and sure enough it would turn itself back on. I am not entirely sure what the trigger is to get this "feature" but it was annoying. Not so annoying though that I did anything other than grumble about it every time I turned it off. Finally today the right alignment of the planets, free time and annoyance level all synced up and I went looking for an answer. I found a KB article that describes how to turn it off permanently. You can read the article for details and background or follow the steps below. http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;306993&sd=tech

To close the Language bar (using Classic view in Control Panel):