Few open programs displays separate icon while others don't

[LoganM]

I am having some strange problem with my taskbar icons. Whenever I launch any programs that are pinned to the taskbar I can see two different icons appearing for the same application. I would like to bring to your notice that I am running Windows 7 on my computer. Let me explain this in a better way with an example. Whenever I click on IE icon to open up the browser from the taskbar, I can see only one instance of IE irrespective of the number of windows I have. On the contrary, if I click on, lets say, Firefox I can see as many number of instances as many windows there are. So how can this happen and what should I do to solve this? This fill-ups my taskbar and makes it messy.

[Sujit15]

There is nothing major about the problem. It is just some settings that you must change to fix the problem. All you have to do is go to Windows Desktop and right click on the taskbar. Select Properties and then go to the Taskbar tab. Click on the Taskbar buttons, go through the drop down list and choose Never combine. Click on the OK button for changes to be applied. Now see if you can notice the changes. If not then restart your computer and then see if that helps.

[LoganM]

I think you didn't understood what I want to say. Actually the thing what you are saying is already done on my computer. I have already the settings enabled which says always combine and this is what I wanted. But the problem is that there are still some applications which creates their own instance when they are launched. This is what I don't understand why? I don't know why they are going against the rule what has been defined by me in Windows and how to force each applications to follow the rule.

[Sujit15]

Ok so I got your point and thanks for clarifying me. So for the applications which does not gets combined when you open the application, open any one of such application and right click on the icon which represents the launched application (and not the one which a shortcut to it). Select Pin this program to taskbar. Now unpin the shortcut from the taskbar. Now test that application and see if that works. If this works then you can perform the same operation for all the application which is disobeying your rule.

[Zavier]

This problem occurs if you have pinned the shortcut of the application instead of the application itself. That means if you right click on the shortcut icon of an application and selected it to be pinned to the taskbar then that might be the cause of the problem. In such situation, unpin the icon for that application and go to the folder containing the exe file of that application. Right click on the exe file and select Pin this to the taskbar. Once done, try to launch the application from the taskbar and see if you notice the same problem.