Icons in System Tray do not appear

[Alain Dekker]

I have a Windows XP system that I have been configuring to run as optimised
as possible. This is for an industrial application and the PC has been
cloned and the clone will then be installed on multiple machines. I have
stopped some services in Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services and
set "Visual Effects" to "Adjust for best performance" in Control Panel >
System > Advanced > Performance and a few other changes.

Unfortunately something I've done has caused ALL icons to disappear from the
system tray (bottom right, next to the clock). For example, when you run
Task Manager, you normally see a box with a green bar showing the CPU usage.
This does not appear. Applications all run fine, but the icons never appear.

Any idea what might be causing this? Rebooting does not help.

Thanks,
Alain

 

[BillW50]

I have a Windows XP system that I have been configuring to run as
optimised as possible. This is for an industrial application and the
PC has been cloned and the clone will then be installed on multiple
machines. I have stopped some services in Control Panel >
Administrative Tools > Services and set "Visual Effects" to "Adjust
for best performance" in Control Panel > System > Advanced >
Performance and a few other changes.

Unfortunately something I've done has caused ALL icons to disappear
from the system tray (bottom right, next to the clock). For example,
when you run Task Manager, you normally see a box with a green bar
showing the CPU usage. This does not appear. Applications all run
fine, but the icons never appear.

Any idea what might be causing this? Rebooting does not help.

Wow Alain! I love to know how you did that! As that would be handy for
Windows 2000 systems were you have to show all tray icons. There are
utilities that takes care of it though. Anyway what happens if you boot
up in safe mode?

 

[VanguardLH]

I have a Windows XP system that I have been configuring to run as optimised
as possible. This is for an industrial application and the PC has been
cloned and the clone will then be installed on multiple machines. I have
stopped some services in Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services and
set "Visual Effects" to "Adjust for best performance" in Control Panel >
System > Advanced > Performance and a few other changes.

Unfortunately something I've done has caused ALL icons to disappear from the
system tray (bottom right, next to the clock). For example, when you run
Task Manager, you normally see a box with a green bar showing the CPU usage.
This does not appear. Applications all run fine, but the icons never appear.

So are you asking about the complete disappearance of the system
notification area (aka system tray) in the Windows taskbar? If so, I
recall a registry tweak that eliminates the system tray.

http://www.mydigitallife.info/disab...n-area-to-hide-icons-in-windows-xp-and-vista/

Since this is a policies settings, it's also possible your host is in a
corporate network and the domain is pushing a policy to hide the system
tray. Some of the various settings are mentioned at:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/292504

In the group policy editor (gpedit.msc) go to the User Configuration ->
Administrative Templates -> Start Menu and Taskbar tree node. Under
there, I suspect it's the "Hide notification area" setting that you have
to look at.

"All icons to disappear". Does that mean there is no system tray or
there is a system tray but you don't see any icons within it? In the
latter case, you sure they aren't just hidden because they configured to
hide when inactive or to always hide? Is there a chevron on the left
side of the system tray (a double less-than character)? If so, what
happens when you click on the chevron to expand the system tray?

 

[Henry]

In the group policy editor (gpedit.msc) go to the User Configuration ->
Administrative Templates -> Start Menu and Taskbar tree node. Under
there, I suspect it's the "Hide notification area" setting that you have
to look at.

I get to Administrative Templates but there isn't any Start Menu and Taskbar
tree node in my window. I'm running WinXP Pro SP3 with all the updates.

Henry

 

[VanguardLH]

I get to Administrative Templates but there isn't any Start Menu and
Taskbar tree node in my window. I'm running WinXP Pro SP3 with all
the updates.

Go under the *User Configuration* section, not Computer Configuration.
This is a *per-user* setting (so you have to login under every Windows
account to change this setting if you want it that way for every
account).

 

[Henry]

Thank you. If I would learn to read I wouldn't have had to bother you.

Henry