Vista's special system tray notification icons missing and disable

[Guest]

Since installing a Realtek driver & software package for my onboard sound (as
my sound card manufacturer has yet to release 64-bit drivers), the 3
notification icons - Power, Network, Volume - disappeared. Also, when
right-clicking the notification area, the 'Customize Notification Icons'
option is grayed out. On the 'Notification Area' tab of Taskbar Properties,
for the selected System Icons, Clock was fine, but the other 3 were not
checked, and grayed out.

Obviously, my first instinct was to remove the software and reboot, and that
has helped to an extent, as the Power option in Taskbar Properties is no
longer grayed out, and I can select it and it displays. But Volume and
Network are still unavailable.

Presuming that the selections made there are stored in the registry, I ran
Process Monitor while changing and applying the selection of the Power icon,
but that doesn't show up any relevent (or changed) RegSetValue entries.

So now, I'm at a loss, and I look to you to tell me where these settings are
stored, so I can get the Volume and Network icons back, an re-enable the
'Customize Notification Icons' option.

Chris

 

[Richard G. Harper]

Why not run System Restore and back out to before the driver update?

--
Richard G. Harper [MVP Shell/User] (e-mail address removed)
* NEW! Catch my blog ... http://msmvps.com/blogs/rgharper/
* PLEASE post all messages and replies in the newsgroups
* The Website - http://rgharper.mvps.org/
* HELP us help YOU ... http://www.dts-l.org/goodpost.htm

 

[Guest]

Chris,

I have a similar issue with my tablet pc and vista. I cannot remeber when
the icon disappeared and therefore am unable to link it to any specific
software I installed on my tablet. Though, I have not touched the onboard
sound drivers since I setup the machine so I don't think it is that, that has
caused the network icon to disappear and the options to enable them grey out.

Does anyone else have any ideas about what could be causing this?

 

[Lilo Lentz]

Last night I had the same trouble with grayed out options.
Mine was fixed by simply just logging off and logging back on... had no idea
what caused it.
Well.. my main browser is maxthon, but I also set back IE7 as default
browser for a while...
Seems doing that helps a lot of issues...
Lilo

 

[Googs]

Why not runSystemRestore and back out to before the driver update?

--
Richard G. Harper [MVP Shell/User] (e-mail address removed)
* NEW! Catch my blog ...http://msmvps.com/blogs/rgharper/
* PLEASE post all messages and replies in the newsgroups
* The Website -http://rgharper.mvps.org/
* HELP us help YOU ...http://www.dts-l.org/goodpost.htm

Since installing a Realtek driver & software package for my onboard sound
(as
my sound card manufacturer has yet to release 64-bit drivers), the 3
notificationicons- Power, Network, Volume - disappeared. Also, when
right-clicking the notification area, the 'Customize NotificationIcons'
option is grayed out. On the 'Notification Area' tab of Taskbar
Properties,
for the selectedSystemIcons, Clock was fine, but the other 3 were not
checked, and grayed out.

So now, I'm at a loss, and I look to you to tell me where these settings
are
stored, so I can get the Volume and Networkiconsback, an re-enable the
'Customize NotificationIcons' option.

Chris

I have the same problem. I can't think of any drivers i've installed
to have caused the problem. Googling for the answer has produced no
results, neither has searching the newsgroups. Any help would really
be appreciated.

Cheers

 

[Guest]

The problem cleared itself up, in a way. As I mentioned before, after
uninstalling the driver, I got the power icon back, but the Network and
Volume icons were still unavailable. Well, after a few more normal reboots
(not changing any drivers, or anything like that) I checked again, and found
that the options were once again available, and ticking them brought the
missing icons straight back!

Needless to say that I won't be installing Realtek's driver package again -
and I long for the time when my sound card manufacturer releases 64-bit
drivers - currently there's only an estimate for one of their other cards for
mid-April! Joy!

Anyway, sorry I can't be more specific to what fixed this problem for me.

Regards,
Chris

Why not runSystemRestore and back out to before the driver update?

--
Richard G. Harper [MVP Shell/User] (e-mail address removed)
* NEW! Catch my blog ...http://msmvps.com/blogs/rgharper/
* PLEASE post all messages and replies in the newsgroups
* The Website -http://rgharper.mvps.org/
* HELP us help YOU ...http://www.dts-l.org/goodpost.htm

Since installing a Realtek driver & software package for my onboard sound
(as
my sound card manufacturer has yet to release 64-bit drivers), the 3
notificationicons- Power, Network, Volume - disappeared. Also, when
right-clicking the notification area, the 'Customize NotificationIcons'
option is grayed out. On the 'Notification Area' tab of Taskbar
Properties,
for the selectedSystemIcons, Clock was fine, but the other 3 were not
checked, and grayed out.

So now, I'm at a loss, and I look to you to tell me where these settings
are
stored, so I can get the Volume and Networkiconsback, an re-enable the
'Customize NotificationIcons' option.

Chris

I have the same problem. I can't think of any drivers i've installed
to have caused the problem. Googling for the answer has produced no
results, neither has searching the newsgroups. Any help would really
be appreciated.

Cheers

 

[Googs]

The problem cleared itself up, in a way. As I mentioned before, after
uninstalling the driver, I got the power icon back, but the Network and
Volumeiconswere still unavailable. Well, after a few more normal reboots
(not changing any drivers, or anything like that) I checked again, and found
that the options were once again available, and ticking them brought themissingiconsstraight back!

Same here. I was playing around with "hp quick launch buttons",
switched it on and after a reboot all the system tray buttons were
back. I'm going to play around with it a bit more, but at least
they're back now.

 

[Amrykid]

I have that problem too, sometimes when I restart they come back.
my guest is a regestry issue.

 

[Guest]

I'm having the missing icon problem as well. However I think everyone else
has more savy than I do. I'm having the grayed out issue so I will continue
to try and reboot and see if I can get them back, but I haven't made any
changes so don't understand what's going on. Hopefully I'll keep checking
back here and someone will have some helpful info that I can follow. I guess
patience is the key.

 

[dean-dean]

Rather than Reboot, try just Logging Off, then back On. I don't know why it
happens, though. It's happened to me, occasionally, as well.

 

[Mark Bourne]

I would have thought it better to restart explorer by logging off and
back on, rather than killing and restarting it. I don't know if it's
more reliable on Vista, but I sometimes found on previous versions of
Windows that killing explorer and restarting it did not always reload
all the icons in the system tray anyway, particularly those belonging to
other applications which are loaded at logon.

 

[LimboDancer]

Hi first post on here. have rcently purchased Dell Inspiron 1720 with vista
ultimate and am getting this problem when switching users or logon /logoff
between users. Also menu lines remain on screen and menus are transparent
until mouse pointer is moved onto them. Also web pages are inaccesible or
very slow
Restart always cures the problem

 

[LimboDancer]

Hi

Found the solution on another post. Apparently this is due to anti-virus in
particular Kaspersky IS ver 7.0.1.325 which I am running

I disabled "registry guard " in "Proactive defense" area and everything solved

Hope this helps.