Computer help forum: IE Disappears on minimizing to task bar

Thanks for your reply. IE8 worked up until I upgraded to the latest Itunes and installed Safari. I then restored to an earlier system date and eliminated the itunes upgrade and the IE8 began to work as before. Then later it started disappearing again and restoring didn't seem to help. I then upgraded to IE9 which also didn't fix the problem. I downloaded firefox which has not experienced the same problem. I then unpinned IE9 and started using firefox, but don't like it as well as IE. This morning I did repin IE to the taskbar at your suggestion and now it seems to be working normally again. Thanks again for your help.
John

Thanks for your suggestion. The Alt+Tab didn't seem to make any difference. But see my reply to Mark.

I just noticed that the pages that seem to disappear from the taskbar are still active in the quick launch area on the right side of the taskbar. I'm confused.

I think I have always had a quick launch area on this computer since I bought it new. It did come with vista and a free upgrade to Windows 7. The "quick launch area is on the extreme right of the taskbar and several programs when I loaded them imediately were there such as a program called "lasso." that is also where my Norton icon and the HP total care advisor is, along with the system speaker controls and the battery icon, etc. Before this problem started, IE was pinned on the extreme left side of the taskbar next to the start icon. When I had several pages of IE loaded and put my cursor over the IE icon, all the loaded pages would line up (thumbnail size) accrose the bottom of the screen. Now they show up in my "quicklaunch" box or area. I still don't know why the IE program changed.