Notification/Tray area activation

Hi,

I've got two desktops with Windows 7 and am having the same problem on both - when I press the arrow on the task bar to open the area with the icons, as soon as I move the mouse towards it the window with the icons in it disappears i.e. it loses activation and closes. It can take up to ten goes to get in there to access an icon. As a workaround I've temporarily put them on the task bar but there is too many and it takes up an undesirable amount of my bar.

Is there a way to give this small window 'always on top' or 'keep activated' status?

Thanks.

I've only just bought windows 7 - the other PC has had it for a month or so. It's been like that the whole time. I've tried turning off everything that might steal the activation but no luck - as soon as I move my cursor toward that window it just closes....

They are on the same home network through a router. We have two Windows 7 setup disks (not upgrade) and did a Custom install from XP on both.

As I said before, I'm using the 'Always show all icons' option which would be fine if there wasn't so many - can I remove some of those like the network etc, if yes, how do I do that?

Thanks.

which icons disappear? notification area?

Rightclick taskbar>Properties>Customize Notification area

oops, off track guys - the whole window vanishes ie, the 2 inch x 2 inch window that appears when you press the up arrow - as soon as I move my cursor after pressing the arrow it's gone.

I go straight for the small window and it loses activation and it's gone. I just remembered that the same thing happens with auto complete on my browser - I go to click the suggestion and the auto complete closes - takes about ten attempts before that will stay there too.