Vanishiing Tray Incons

[Ken]

XP Pro, SP2

Don't know if this is as Windows problem, or specific to a particular
application.

Every once in a while, I'll notice that my tray icon for Norton Ghost, or
Norton Personal Firewall, vanishes. I reboot, and they come back.

Is Windows shutting down the app? Is the app shutting itself down? Is
something else shutting it down? Or is it still running, but the tray icon
just isn't there?
(Anyone know the names of the Ghost and/or NPF processes, so I can see if
they continue to run in the absence of the icons?)

I'm up to date on Norton A/V signatures, and on my virus scanning, and I run
Ad-Aware and Ad-Watch.

Or do I have to contact Symantec. (Hope not -- their customer service
leaves lots to be desired. I usually end up solving my problems and
explaining the solution to the tech.)

Any ideas?

Thanks.
Ken

 

[FeMaster]

Do you have Win XP set up to hide inactive icons? If so, you should have a
little double-arrow next to the tray icons. Clicking this will show you any
hidden icons. If they are there, then everything is still running, and you
have nothing to worry about...

If you don't like that they are being hidden, you can either turn off the
feature, or set specific icons to never hide... Right-click the task bar,
and select properties. At the bottom of the window, either uncheck "Hide
inactive icons", or choose "Customize" to the right of that option...

Later...

 

[Guest]

Assuming its not the simple problem that FeMaster described, you can find a
few possible fixes here:

http://www.tech-pro.net/howto_013.html

The one that worked for me was disabling UPnP. Haven't found any downside to
having it disabled and my tray icons no longer go on vacation.

 

[Ken]

No.... I know about the hidden devils. These aren't hiding... they're
AWOL.

 

[FeMaster]

One other thing that I have noticed is that if "explorer.exe" crashes,
Windows will reload it ("safety" feature of XP). I've had this happen a few
times. When Explorer.exe reloads, it reloads everything including the icons
in the tray. I have come to notice, however, that after this happens not
all the icons reappear; some are MIA. The programs are still running, just
their icons are missing...

One program I know this happens for is WinMX (P2P Software). I don't recall
which others disappear, but perhaps this could be the problem? I don't know
of a cure to this fault, except a reboot... Just another thought...