I have a very recently installed RH7.2. It used to be that if a new application window opened, a bar for it would appear at the bottom of the screen. And if I minimized the window that bar would remain so the window was easily restored. But no more. Windows no longer show up there, and minimizing now results in the window disappearing (closing?) and becoming unavailable. I don't know what I could've done to cause this to happen. I can't find any options dialogs that seem to address this kind of problem, and it seems outrageous I should have to completely re-install RH for something like this. Is there some way to fix this or am I just stuck with it?

Are you running KDE or Gnome? If you right-click on the panel/kicker and add some items you might find that the one you're looking for is in there. Can't remember what it's called at the moment, just take a peek.