Turn off the Language Bar
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):
| 1. | Click Start, click Control Panel, and then double-click Regional and Language Options. |
| 2. | On the Languages tab, under Text services and input languages, click Details. |
| 3. | Under Preferences, click Language Bar. |
| 4. | Deselect the Show the Language bar on the desktop check box. |
