For some reason on a XP-professional the program tabs are very small and only show the icon of the program.
There is no text as far as I can see. I tried for hours to find a way to make them normal size (where they say the name of the program as well as an icon). How do you fix this? I can post screen shots if need be.
Check you slide adjustments on the taskbar. I can recreate what you have by moving the Quicklaunch bar size adjuster to the right which scrunches the program tabs.
Right click the tack bar and uncheck all taskbars to see if it goes away.
rightclick taskbar > untick "lock taskbar" > find and element and move it to the right or left, they normally have little dots where you can click and drag to move items.