System Tray Network Icon Disappeared

[John McGaw]

I've just bought my first Vista computer. You will probably be seeing a lot
of me around here until I figure out the myriad ways it differs from XP and
previous Windows version.

The first problem I present is: the network icon which used to appear in
the system tray has disappeared. It used to, on mouse click offer a choice
of animation etc. I did not, at least intentionally, turn it off. I'd
really like to get it back and to understand where/why it went. Help search
does nothing but aggravate with circularly linked non-answers.

System is a new HP notebook DV4-1123US with Vista Home Premium x64 sp 1,
4gb memory, etc.

 

[John McGaw]

I've just bought my first Vista computer. You will probably be seeing a
lot of me around here until I figure out the myriad ways it differs from
XP and previous Windows version.

The first problem I present is: the network icon which used to appear in
the system tray has disappeared. It used to, on mouse click offer a
choice of animation etc. I did not, at least intentionally, turn it
off. I'd really like to get it back and to understand where/why it went.
Help search does nothing but aggravate with circularly linked non-answers.

System is a new HP notebook DV4-1123US with Vista Home Premium x64 sp 1,
4gb memory, etc.

OK, bad form to answer one's own posts but I just wanted to say that I
found a fix at

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/106787-notification-area-system-icons.html

and used the "download" and merge method. Still doesn't tell me why the
icon disappeared in the first place. And it still doesn't say why I didn't
notice that the power and volume icons had vanished too. But it does tell
me that the transition to Vista isn't going to be easy since I found that I
didn't know how to run regedit or anything else. Sigh...