Disappearing Icons In Notification Area?

[(PeteCresswell)]

For a long time, I've been blaming a certain app for the
disappearance of it's icon from TaskBar | Notification Area.

But now I've just installed another application which has started
behaving the same way and I'm starting to think maybe it's an XP
thing - or, at least, some interaction between an XP quirk and
the applications in question.

The two apps are AnyDVD and Process Lasso.

The behavior is that I start the app, it's icon appears in the
Notification Area, and then when I MouseOver the icon it
disappears - thus preventing me from opening the app's window.

AnyDVD's behavior has been largely mitigated since a couple of
reinstalls, but it still happens occasionally. Process Lasso
was a-ok until I paid for it and installed the
latest-and-greatest version.

In the case of Process Lasso, at least, it's two processes are
still running per Process Explorer and TaskMan.

Does this sound familiar to anybody?

 

[VanguardLH]

For a long time, I've been blaming a certain app for the
disappearance of it's icon from TaskBar | Notification Area.

But now I've just installed another application which has started
behaving the same way and I'm starting to think maybe it's an XP
thing - or, at least, some interaction between an XP quirk and
the applications in question.

The two apps are AnyDVD and Process Lasso.

The behavior is that I start the app, it's icon appears in the
Notification Area, and then when I MouseOver the icon it
disappears - thus preventing me from opening the app's window.

AnyDVD's behavior has been largely mitigated since a couple of
reinstalls, but it still happens occasionally. Process Lasso
was a-ok until I paid for it and installed the
latest-and-greatest version.

In the case of Process Lasso, at least, it's two processes are
still running per Process Explorer and TaskMan.

Does this sound familiar to anybody?

Click the chevron (<) on the left side of the system notification area
(aka system tray). That will expand it so hidden icons are shown. It
also means that you configured the Windows taskbar's properties so the
system tray will hide the hidden or inactive icons.

If the taskbar is configured to "Always Hide" or "Hide When Inactive"
for an icon then that icon will be always hidden or hidden when it is
not active; however, that only applies if you configured to hide those
icons. If you configure the taskbar to never hide icons (the "Hide
inactive icons" option is disabled) then you will always see all the
tray icons.

 

[BillW50]

In

Click the chevron (<) on the left side of the system notification area
(aka system tray). That will expand it so hidden icons are shown. It
also means that you configured the Windows taskbar's properties so the
system tray will hide the hidden or inactive icons.

If the taskbar is configured to "Always Hide" or "Hide When Inactive"
for an icon then that icon will be always hidden or hidden when it is
not active; however, that only applies if you configured to hide those
icons. If you configure the taskbar to never hide icons (the "Hide
inactive icons" option is disabled) then you will always see all the
tray icons.

Did that help Pete? As I was thinking that it is something else. And if
I recall correctly, doesn't Process Lasso had a restore tray icon
feature somewhere? Or am I thinking of another program?

 

[VanguardLH]

In

Did that help Pete? As I was thinking that it is something else. And if
I recall correctly, doesn't Process Lasso had a restore tray icon
feature somewhere? Or am I thinking of another program?

I figure to address the obvious first: not expanding the tray when it is
compressed to hide icons.

Another cause is of explorer.exe (Windows Explorer), which is the
desktop manager, getting restarted. One restart, explorer.exe does not
go looking for what processes had tray icons. Instead a tray icon
reappears if the program is configured to periodically check the state
of its tray icon. If it doesn't, the icon disappears when you
explorer.exe (just like it's not there when you first login to your
desktop and until the program adds the tray icon). Rather than reboot
Windows, you can just logoff and login to reload the icons. If
explorer.exe crashing and restarting is the cause of the missing icons,
checking the Event Viewer might lead to what is killing the explorer.exe
process. Some programs have an icon restore function. However, if the
program updated its status to ensure its icon was there then it doesn't
need that restore option (i.e., it's restoring it periodically). The
problem isn't pervasive or occur if WPF is used to code a program but
the old WinForms had bugs regarding refresh. Microsoft's excuse for not
fixing the bug is that too many program rely on the workarounds which
won't work if they fixed WinForms. I've seen lots of [old] workarounds
mentioned over at the codeproject.com and Answers forums.

If you use Task Manager to kill explore.exe, the desktop disappears.
Then use Task Manager's File -> New Task menu to start a new instance of
explore.exe. The desktop reappears; however, some of the tray icons
will be missing. Unless the program has a timer or checks events to
refresh its tray icon (automatically in the program or via some option
in the program's UI), you're stuck having to logoff and log back in to
see what where previously invisible tray icons.

As to whether it helped Pete or not, I cannot say. Pete hasn't bothered
to return to this thread in 5 days so obviously it wasn't that important
to him or he is too busy fixing other things.

 

[BillW50]

In

In

Did that help Pete? As I was thinking that it is something else. And
if I recall correctly, doesn't Process Lasso had a restore tray icon
feature somewhere? Or am I thinking of another program?

I figure to address the obvious first: not expanding the tray when it
is compressed to hide icons.

Another cause is of explorer.exe (Windows Explorer), which is the
desktop manager, getting restarted. One restart, explorer.exe does
not go looking for what processes had tray icons. Instead a tray icon
reappears if the program is configured to periodically check the state
of its tray icon. If it doesn't, the icon disappears when you
explorer.exe (just like it's not there when you first login to your
desktop and until the program adds the tray icon). Rather than reboot
Windows, you can just logoff and login to reload the icons. If
explorer.exe crashing and restarting is the cause of the missing
icons, checking the Event Viewer might lead to what is killing the
explorer.exe process. Some programs have an icon restore function.
However, if the program updated its status to ensure its icon was
there then it doesn't need that restore option (i.e., it's restoring
it periodically). The problem isn't pervasive or occur if WPF is
used to code a program but the old WinForms had bugs regarding
refresh. Microsoft's excuse for not fixing the bug is that too many
program rely on the workarounds which won't work if they fixed
WinForms. I've seen lots of [old] workarounds mentioned over at the
codeproject.com and Answers forums.

If you use Task Manager to kill explore.exe, the desktop disappears.
Then use Task Manager's File -> New Task menu to start a new instance
of explore.exe. The desktop reappears; however, some of the tray
icons will be missing. Unless the program has a timer or checks
events to refresh its tray icon (automatically in the program or via
some option in the program's UI), you're stuck having to logoff and
log back in to see what where previously invisible tray icons.

As to whether it helped Pete or not, I cannot say. Pete hasn't
bothered to return to this thread in 5 days so obviously it wasn't
that important to him or he is too busy fixing other things.

Yes I have a long history with Explorer crashing and some tray icons
disappearing for the past 13 years at least. And 99.9% of the time for
me it has been those Windows updates that causes this problem. I am not
bothered by this problem anymore since I use Aston Shell on all of my
Windows machines. So there is no Explorer Shell running to crash
anymore. ;-)

Anyway Process Lasso also has a restore lost tray icon under Programs ->
Process Lasso. And that should take care of Pete's lost Process Lasso
tray icon problem at least temporary. And yes, I too was thinking about
Pete's Explorer Shell was probably crashing and thus the lost of some of
his tray icons. Somebody mentioned here lately (it could have been you)
that when Explorer Shell restarts, it sends a command to all of the apps
in the tray to restore their icons. And some software ignores such
requests.

 

[franciscojgoes]

It's an issue in microsoft timeout of 4 seconds in programs registration for notification area.

If a program waiting for a service to finish loading freezes for more than 4 second
loses it chances for showing there.

I found a solution for my problem of losing icons in notification area whenautologon is activated. The trick is to use RunOnce entries because it blocks executions of all startup executions before it ends, giving more time to services to end initialization.

create a file named sleep.vbs (NOT sleep.vbs.txt) with this content:
wscript.sleep 5000

run cmd.exe
type and run (change file paths if necesary):

reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce /v TrayIconFIX /t REG_SZ /d "\Windows\system32\wscript.exe \myfolder\sleep.vbs"

after two logons must solve the issue, if not modify sleep.vbs increasing the time.


El domingo, 11 de marzo de 2012 14:35:57 UTC+1, (PeteCresswell) escribió:

For a long time, I've been blaming a certain app for the

....

 

[Francisco]

ups, there is a bug in the intructions, the patched one is:

create a file named sleep.vbs (NOT sleep.vbs.txt) with this content:
wscript.sleep 5000

run regedit
navigate to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
Create a new value with name TrayIconFIX, type REG_SZ and value (change file paths if necesary):
reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce /v TrayIconFIX /t REG_SZ /d "\Windows\system32\wscript.exe \myfolder\sleep.vbs"