Taskbar "Hide Inactive Icons" Option is greyed out

[Guest]

I suspect that I must have changed or deleted a registry entry when I removed
a IE highjacker. I have tried two of the tweaks shown in kellys korner, but
they haven't worked so far.

 

[Ramesh, MS-MVP]

Hi Driller,

Open Regedit.exe and navigate to the following location:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

In the right-pane, delete the two values namely:

- NoAutoTrayNotify
- NoTrayItemsDisplay

If you're using Windows XP Professional, here are the Group Policy
equivalents:

Start/Run and type GPEDIT.MSC
Navigate to this location:

=>User Configuration
==>Administrative Templates
===>Start Menu and Taskbar

- Turn off notification area cleanup
- Hide the notification area

Set both of the above to "Not configured"

 

[Ramesh, MS-MVP]

Hi Driller,

Open Regedit.exe and navigate to the following location:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

In the right-pane, delete the two values namely:

- NoAutoTrayNotify
- NoTrayItemsDisplay

If you're using Windows XP Professional, here are the Group Policy
equivalents:

Start/Run and type GPEDIT.MSC
Navigate to this location:

=>User Configuration
==>Administrative Templates
===>Start Menu and Taskbar

- Turn off notification area cleanup
- Hide the notification area

Set both of the above to "Not configured"

 

[Guest]

May be greyed out because it's not available under your current 'Visual
Effects' setting. Control Panel (change to classic view). System. Click
'Advanced' tab. At top (Peformance') click 'Settings'. Now select the option
to 'Adjust For Best Appearance', and click OK.

 

[Guest]

Hi Ramesh,

I'm running XP Pro. When I performed the GPEDIT operations you suggested,
everything in my notifications area disappeared. When I clicked on
"properties", everything, including the clock was greyed out. I tried
changing the settings back, but now they had no effect.

Then I deleted the two registry entries you suggested, and that worked!
Except for the clock. Now that options was greyed out. Again GPEDIT had no
effect, so I went back to the registry, but instead of deleting the no clock
entry, I just set it to 0. Now all my options in the notifications are
active.

So, all in all, thankyou.

 

[Ramesh, MS-MVP]

You're very welcome!