Vista doesn't let me create a history toolbar

Ok, I little trick that I've used on every version of Windows that had a
toolbar "Quick Launch" feature, doesn't seem possible with Vista.

The trick, I like to place a history toolbar on the taskbar. In preivous
versions like Win98 I did this by going into the Windows folder, on 2000/XP I
found I had to use the C:\Documents and Settings\"users name" \Application
Data\Microsoft\....

The reason I do this is to let me back track to previously visited pages
without first opening IE. I find for me that having the address first in
either my "favorites" or "history" and then having IE open when I click on
the the page feels more natural. In fact this is the major reason I use IE7
over Firefox, or any others of that type. In the same sense I don't open
media player first and browse to the mp3 I want to play, or open my
compression program and browse to the zip file I want to open, that's too
many steps. I want to be able to access my data file and have the program
needed to use it open up when I click on the data file, this means urls as
well IMHO. Having a history toolbar saves me from adding a fair number of
sites/pages to my favorites as well, keeping it a manageable size.

Well in Vista I can't seem to find the History file, so I can't create a
toolbar out of the folder. In fact 2 of the folders I've browsed through in
XP to reach the history folder are shown as short cuts instead and won't let
me access them. I'm fairly sure this is a Vista "feature" because I use IE7
on 2 XP computers and I have the history folder as a toolbar folder, no
problem.

Is there any way to get around this "feature"? Hopefully there is. If not I
might as well use Firefox. I'm even tempted to go back to XP, thats how much
I like using this method.

P.s I have all the folders set as viewablein Vist, so the problem isn't
there unless Vista has a level of folders that are impossible to view no
matter what setting you have in "folder views".

Update:
I've read another post that helped with the folders I couldn't access, seems
Vist puts the data in a different place. Ok, fine.
But it seems that history is now a file instead of a folder, and there's no
way to make a file into a toolbar, because the toolbar can only be a file.
Even when I do open the history file it only contains the history file for
today, but using history in IE7 shows a history going back 3 weeks,

Why does Vista have to do this?
Does it have to do with making it more secure? Or is it so that IE7 behaves
more like Firefox? If it's the later that's just stupid. On the other hand if
it's so "malware" can't read my history so it can track me, well good luck
with that concept because they'll find a way to read it any way. lol
All it does for me is screw up my ablity to use IE7 the way I want to,
thanks.