Tried that. If I do that, my quick launch items go away.
go to an empty place on the toolbar, right click, go up to toolbars, see Quick launch - it should be checked.
Mine did the exact same thing yesterday.
I just kept fooling with it as everyone is suggesting...trying to use the mouse to pull the TB back to its normal size.
Don’t even ask me what finally worked...suddenly I had the taskbar at normal size, but it was far darker than the usual light blue.
I thought the hell with it, I can live with dark blue, but at somepoint when I was surfing or checking something it switched to light blue again, and since then everything is fine.
Before it cleared up I had been about to try a system restore...you could always give that a whirl.