Blank (generic) tray icon

[Rojo Habe]

One of my systray icons is missing. Instead the Windows
generic-piece-of-paper icon is displayed. The app in question is
razertra.exe, which provides tray access to my Razer Diamondback mouse
settings. The file itself does still have the icon, as does the Start menu
shortcut pointing to it. At one point, double-clicking the icon (which
launches razercfg.exe, the mouse control panel) caused razercfg.exe to crash
upon launch, but a system restore to about a week ago seems to have fixed
that. The icon still doesn't show correctly in the tray though. I believe
the crashing was a separate issue.

I have a feeling that this has something to do with Stardock's Object
Desktop, but uninstaling that didn't help. In fact, it caused most of my
desktop icons to go blank too! A subsequent System Restore caused all the
Object Desktop apps to become installed again.

I'm aware that the above are third-party apps, but ultimately it seems to me
that my icon cache might be corrupted, which is a Windows problem. Any help
or advice would be greatly appreciated. I'm running Vista Ultimate SP1;
please ask for any other relevant information and I'll do my best to provide
it.

 

[Rojo Habe]

LOL.
It's a windows problem that you installed a bunch of BS, the BS wrecked
your system...but it's MS's fault.
That's funny...and much the way people behave.

Here's my help.
Uninstall the mouse software.
Reboot.

Then Google "repair vista notification icons" and use whatever fix you
prefer.

After doing that, reinstall the mouse software.

OK, first of all, thanks for your reply, which was very prompt. Perhaps a
little too prompt.

I'm not sure what part of my computer you're referring to as "a bunch of
bullshit" but I'll assume you DON'T mean my mouse driver. I'm willing to
accept that installing a Stardock product might have been a mistake but I
really didn't ask you to criticise or ridicule me for it; neither did I at
any point suggest that Microsoft were at fault. I was just after advice on
how best to get rid of what really is only a minor annoyance anyway.

I thank you also for teaching me of this fabulous thing called "Google". I
never know such wonders could exist! I might add that I have actually
searched Google, Microsoft Knowledge Base and any number of forums, and all
I can find are references to MISSING systray icons, not blank ones. I
thought it best to seek advice here first rather than barge in and try to
fix the wrong thing.

For your information, btw (see, I can abbreviate too), Stardock were the
company behind the visual styles of both XP and Vista, so call it bullshit
if you must but it really isn't helping.

If there's anybody out there who doesn't want to laugh at me and has any
useful advice to offer, I'll be very grateful.

 

[Rojo Habe]

Well I think I can surmise that something happened between March 3 and March
9 to cause all this. Having restored to the earliest restore point
available (March 3) I tried uninstalling all Stardock apps again. This time
everything uninstalled cleanly, leaving my icons intact, and my Razer icon
is back in the tray! It's probably impossible to say specifically what
caused it - I can't even say exactly when I lost the icon since it's
normally auto-hidden. All I can go on is what restore points I have, and
they're all Windows updates and a Java update. I suspect the latter.

Still - all's well that ends well.