Vista Issue (re: Taskbar Freezing)
 

Often when I unplug my laptop, the taskbar "freezes". What happens is that the clock freezes, and floating the pointed over any part of it (start menu, programs, etc.) turns your pointer into an hourglass. You can't switch between programs (except with Alt-Tab....sometimes) and you lose your volume controls, etc. You can double click on the taskbar to get the option to restart it, but doing so loses the volume controls completely (along with most other programs in the system tray) unless you restart. This shouldn't be happening every time I unplug the thing.

Any ideas what could be causing this and how to solve it?

I hope someone can help you. This happens to me all of the time! Sometimes I can't even restart it, I just have to shut it off.

See if this applies to you:
Taskbar Freezing/Unclickable - Windows Vista Performance

Hotfix?
The Windows desktop may stop updating correctly after a Windows Vista-based computer has been running for an extended period of time

yeah, I looked through those. I'll see what I can come up with. Seems like every message board I go to has a different solution/prognosis....some say it's a conflict with google desktop, some say it's a BIOS issue, others a driver thing. frustrating

Have you stopped all services that are non-Microsoft from starting up and took everything out of the startup options?

I wouldn't have the first idea on how to do that :)