Ok so after some extensive tinkering, I have concluded that the aero themes do not translate over to the DF taskbar correctly if you disable transparency.

Attached is an example.

To do this yourself, go into the personalization section of CP, window color, then change it all to black. If you leave transparency on you see no change when you hit save changes. If you disable it, the DF taskbar will corrupt, taking on a very greyed version of the color of the main taskbar. Not that you may have to hit save changes to get this to occur.
I have noticed that the color is surprisingly similar to the inactive windows color, but the old way of changing this to test does not work with aero.

O yea, on the same not, something interesting you could do would be to have an option to color the DF taskbar differently, I know I would use it, as well as different on each of 3 monitors where I ever able to get the three up lol.

Mind informing me what the issue is? This old forum needs something going on, we might as well be able to throw ideas around about persistent issues.