I am stumped on this one. I don't think my old Windows 10 machine has this issue, but my new work PC does.

The problem is the small pinned taskbar icons in the lower left corner. They won't stay fixed and unchanged.

When I select one of the pinned icons, it expands into the 2" wide version in that spot, right in the middle of the other pinned icons, moving them farther right.

What I want is for those tiny pinned icons to stay exactly where they are and the new active 2" wide part to appear separately on the taskbar, farther right.

Locking the taskbar does not affect this apparently. I have it set to never combine taskbar buttons. Changing this just results in the taskbar icon, and no separate active window icon farther right.

Try right clicking on the task bar Go to settings and see if the show badges is off