I have been having similar problems to you.
At boot the task bar would be slightly oversized and with "Chunky" icons. Sometimes No WB icon in task bar.
Unloading & then reloading WB some times fixed the problem but NOT always!
Then I found quite by accident that By running MSBootvis or running my defrag (including defrag of boot files) the problem dissapeared for a while. Is it possible that WB is not finding all it's components during boot?
I run applications that use huge files, 300mb graphic scans, so my disks get fragmented quite quickly.
What will happen to "fixes" for our problems now that GOOGLE have got thier hands on Window Blinds?