Question: I can aleady add a Recycle bin shortcut to the taskbar with the Quick Launch bar, why should I use Free Launch Bar?

Answer: If you use small Quick Launch icons, there's nothing wrong. However, if you try to use large Quick Launch Icons, the taskbar will grow in height causing the pinned programs to have space below them. This also makes the taskbar take up more space on your screen.  Free Launch Bar allows you to adjust the spacing around the icons to prevent the taskbar from growing in height.

Question: I changed the Windows Explorer icon to automatically open Computer by default. Why should I use Free Launch Bar to add a shortcut?

Answer: If you did that, check your task manager and look at how many Explorer processes you have running. Every time you launch Computer using the Windows Explorer icon on your taskbar, it opens another explorer.exe process. These duplicate processes do not go away after closing all explorer windows. This doesn't happen if you launch Computer from the Start menu, or from a shortcut on the Free Launch Bar.

1. Free Launch Bar - Homepage | Direct Download (Supports both 32bit and 64bit)

1. Install Free Launch Bar with the default settings.

1. Right Click anywhere on your taskbar and go to Toolbars and click Free Launch Bar.
2. If you already had the Quick Launch toolbar enabled, you might want to disable it by Right clicking the taskbar, Toolbars, and unchecking Quick Launch.
   
   

1. Go to your Start menu.
2. While holding down your Right click, drag the Computer icon to the Free Launch Bar.
3. Click Create Shortcut(s) here.
   
   

Adding a Recycle Bin shortcut to your Free Launch bar:

1. Minimize all Windows so that you can see the Recycle Bin shortcut on your desktop.
2. While holding down your Right click, drag the Recycle Bin icon to the Free Launch Bar.
3. Click Create Shortcut(s) here.
   
   

To use large icons, simply Right click the Free Launch Bar and go to View, Large icons.

Just like a regular Quick Launch Bar, if you use large icons, the taskbar will grow in height by about 5 pixels. This causes other pinned programs to look silly and it makes the taskbar use up extra space unnecessarily.

You can fix this very easily.

1. Right click anywhere on the Free Launch Bar and go to FLB Settings.
   
   
2. On the left, click Metrics.
3. Underneath Button margins, change Height to 0.
   
   
4. Press OK.

I have been searching for a way to add a Computer and Recycle Bin to the taskbar in Windows 7 without any of the side effects mentioned in this guide. Searching google pulled up hundreds of results from people ignoring the obvious issues presented with using large icons in the Quick Launch bar, or the multiple explorer.exe processes associated with the pinned explorer icon.

I was unable to find anything in all of the results that solved all of these issues. I recalled Free Launch Bar was a program that let me fine tune the spacing around the icons and then it dawned on me that Free Launch Bar would solve all of these issues.  I guess, when Windows 7 was first released, Free Launch Bar didn't work properly on it.  Now it works fine.

Hopefully this guide is useful to others and if you like it, please tell others about it.