Two problems

Sorry, but you're likely looking at living with these issues for the foreseeable future.

#1 has been a bug in pretty much every version of Windows since Windows95. If Microsoft was ever going to fix it, they would have done so ages ago. The fact that it's persisted for 13 years means it's likely here to stay. You can always hope it will be fixed in Windows 7, but I wouldn't if I were you.

#2 is one I can't quite figure out for sure, but I'm guessing you made your own shortcut of the recycle bin on the taskbar, and it fails to work correctly. The recycle bin icon on the desktop is a special case icon, like the IE icon and a few others, so if you make a shortcut for it, you can't always rely on it working exactly the same as the original.

Basically, both of these issues would be on the extremely low priority list to be fixed. Don't expect to ever see them fixed until Microsoft finally retires Windows, or at least bases a new version off of a completely rewritten code base. At present, that means you're looking at a minimum of the release AFTER Windows 7, which is the next release.

1.) After you set the layout, try going Tools->Folder Options->View->Apply to folders. In short, Windows only remembers the last XXX number of preferences, and the user settings can be forgotten after an improper shutdown, an explorer.exe crash, or by running some 'junk cleaners.' Not likely to be fixed anytime soon.

2.) Sorry, no fix for that one, but note that a registry 'fixer' only deletes what it determines to be obsolete entries...they aren't capable of fixing most problems, including this one, and can actually cause more harm than good by deleting needed entries, so use them with caution.

John