I can't get rid of my windowed tool bar.

[Fleebert]

So I've started the game and everything runs just fine -- except my desktop tool bar won't go away in game. To clarify, the tool bar is the rectangle that goes across the bottom of your screen with icons such as the internet, folders, e-mail, power, etc. Anyway, this bar will not go away in game. I've tried going in and out of full screen mode and restarting the game to no avail. Is there anything I'm missing here? All of my other steam games work fine, and show no bar, this one in particular is deciding to be difficult... A response ASAP would be appreciated because I literally can't do anything -- the tool bar is blocking the architecture and building things.

[nccvoyager]

If you are running Windows 7:
Hiding taskbar:
Right-click the tool bar.
Select properties.
Select "auto-hide the taskbar."
Click "ok."

Newer versions of Windows, starting with a Windows 7 update some time ago, removed the ability to have the taskbar not always be on top.
This results in some full-screen programs failing to render above the taskbar.
This feature has not been returned as of 29-09-2016 in any version of windows.
Unfortunately, the only method to change this is to have the taskbar set to automatically hide, which is not directly what you want, but is the only known workaround right now.

Alternatively, you can try disabling the Windows Aero theme, and enabling the Windows Basic theme.
For me, this resulted in the taskbar rendering above fullscreen games at launch, and then disappearing once I clicked on the game window.