Windows 7 New behavior of Chrome icon

[Amnesiac]

As of a few days, there is a distinct and confusing change in the way Chrome runs or, rather, the way it is presented in the taskbar. I have made a few illustrations that hopefully explain what my issue is:

is this clear as mud? I keep forgetting that Chrome is already running, look in the left-most corner where I'm used to the icon being - it doesn't seem to be running - and start a new instance where lots of tabs are suddenly 'missing', then I remember.
Why this 'new-and-improved' behavior?
Thank you.
PS: Yes, there are a few previous posts along these lines, the offered solutions don't work for me though.

 

[Neemobeer]

Can you look in task manager and verify this other process is actually called chrome.exe? Windows is actually what groups the icons and it's done by process name. The only way I know that they will separate is if the process name is different.

 

[Amnesiac]

Thanks Nemo. I have 'composed' as it were two screenhots by way of illustration. The first shows Windows/Chrome with only the Gmail tab active:

...and in this one, I have pressed 'Reply' in your Gmail message and windowsforum.com is running in the second tab:

the Chrome processes are visible for both cases. Does this tell you anything?

 

[Neemobeer]

No it doesn't really explain the behavior. Are you clicking the pinned chrome icon to launch this and if so right click it and go to Propeties and see if there are any flags after the chrome.exe in the target field. You could also try resetting your chrome flags. Open chrome and type chrome://flags in the address bar. Click the "Reset all to default"

 

[Amnesiac]

Didn't tell me anyting either. The Target box reads: "C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe". I will try the flag thingy and report back after a brief nosh.

 

[Amnesiac]

Nope. Same ol' same ol'. Perhaps it's best just to roll with it? I have kind of gotten used to it in the days since it started, but then I also pride myself on my tenacity, never saying 'die'....but I have no ideas of my own here.

 

[Neemobeer]

Could even be something with the pinned icon. Have you tried unpinning and re-pinning chrome?

 

[Amnesiac]

Yes I have. I have also uninstalled/reinstalled Chrome. I also tried the advice offered by Rachel in reply to the post 'a [sic] odd new behavior' below:
'Unpin the Thunderbird icon from the taskbar, then run Thunderbird from the Start Menu and pin the resulting Thunderbird icon to the taskbar. I had this happen to both Firefox and Thunderbird.' substituting Chrome for Thunderbird. Same ol'...you know.