SysTray Icons of some programs don't re-appear after Explorer restart

[ajfudge]

Hi there. I'm wondering why the system tray icons of some programs do not re-appear after restarting Windows Explorer. Examples of programs where this behavior occur are Ditto (clipboard manager) and Magic Disc (virtual optical drive). Note that they are still running, the icons just didn't reappear.

Is this normal? Coz I can't seem to find a working solution to this online. I always set the icons for programs such as those I mentioned to "Show icon and notifications". Help?

 

[sreedhav]

Dear ajfudge,
Did you check among the hidden icons which you can open by clicking on the small ARROW in the Task bar? If not, kindly get back.

Regards,
sree

 

[ajfudge]

sreedhav,

If you mean the popup system tray icons, yes I did, of course. (I wouldn't be asking about this if I hadn't ). That's where Magic Disc resides, while Ditto is placed outside of that popup beside the flag icon.

-AJ

 

[richc46]

Welcome
Sounds like the type of problem that a reset would solve, then reboot.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/13102-notification-area-icons-reset.html

 

[quickdraw2011]

Prehaps, when you reboot those programs in question, they are not set to automatically run in services. Check the programs in questions to see if they are running in background. Also, look in msconfig startup programs and task manager processes. You could download SystemInternals Process Explorer to futher monitor their behavior. Driver conflicts, viruses, malware, the effects of using registry cleaners, updates, all can cause odd behavior. You could try running the installed troubleshooting programs, or sfc /scannow in the elevated command prompt. Check Device Manager for conflicts, and take a look at Event Viewer for errors. Look in System Information>Components>Problem Devices. Try running msconfig in selective startup; Add and elimate defferent startups and services items as you reboot. One of them may be the one which is interfering with the icons display. There's no easy way to troubleshoot. You've got to keep looking for where it's hiding. Maybe one of these old timers on here knows of a magic button to easily fix, I do not! Bye now!

 

[Arc]

I'd say that it would not make a difference, if the programs can be run . All the programs you mentioned need not to start up with windows, and need not to run in background always.

Make it sure that you can run the programs when you want to do it. If so, you need not to be worried.

If you want to add them back, you can follow the Method Two of the tutorial http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1401-startup-programs-change.html (either option , based on your requirement) .

 

[seekermeister]

I ran into a similar problem earlier today, after shutting down a game, half of the tray icons has disappeared, but their exes were still listed in the Task Manager. When I tried to reset them via the customize options, it said that the icons were not currently active, but would be displayed again when they were. I didn't dwell on it too much, because it was easier to simply reboot. Nothing else that I thought of seemed to work.

 

[richc46]

Had a similar problem, perhaps due to the updates?

 

[ajfudge]

@quickdraw,
Those programs are set to run on startup. They are also running in the background. I'm just bothered why the icons never re-appear after restarting explorer.

@seekermeister,
Exactly the same thing I'm experiencing. While rebooting fixes this, the reason why I'm bothered by this is I can't access the nifty context menu of those programs which can't be accessed by a hotkey, so when they don't reappear I always have to restart those programs to ensure that I can access them easily. (This is especially true on crucial times that I can't afford to reboot).

@arc,
I can terminate those programs with task manager, and I can run it whenever I want. I added those two to my startup because, well, they're pretty useful to my computing needs.

Please note that my "normal" system tray icons are fine (battery, network, volume, flag). Just some programs I set to stay in system tray.

@richc46,
I don't think it's the updates. I have experienced this since I started utilizing the system tray for programs. Perhaps it's the programs' fault?


Thanks for the insights, guys.

 

[quickdraw2011]

Here's one more. To recover lost/missing system tray icons.

1. Back up the Registry by creating a restore point.
2. Go to Start > Run (or Windows-key + R), type in regedit and hit OK.
3. Navigate to the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Cla sses\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Wi ndows\CurrentVersion \TrayNotify.
4. Delete the values IconStreams and PastIconsStream.
5. Open up the Task Manager (Ctrl + Shift + Esc), go to the Processes tab, select explorer.exe and click End Process.
6. Open the Applications tab and click New Task at the bottom-right of the window.
7. In the message box that pops up type in explorer.exe and hit OK.
8. Explorer.exe will reload, and the missing icons should now be back in the system-tray where they belong.
9. Then if the volume bar isnt there, go to taskbar properties (where the volume was gray) and simply tick the box.

 

[UsernameIssues]

........why the system tray icons of some programs do not re-appear after restarting Windows Explorer....

Probably because that is the way that the programs with the missing icons were written... they create the icon once and then never do it again.

........Is this normal?.......

Windows sends out a message that explorer is starting (or in this case, restarting), some programs simply do not "listen" for that message. So for those deaf programs, it is normal for the icons not to show up again until you either:
kill and restart the program that has the missing icon
or reboot the computer.

However, there are programs that do "listen" to that particular operating system message and sometimes their icon will reappear after explorer crashes/restarts and sometimes their icons will not reappear??? I can only guess that this is a timing issue - too many apps setting up icons right after a restart of explorer.

 

[quickdraw2011]

I'm currently not on my Windows 7 computer. Try this.
Right-click the taskbar. Right-click properties. Remove the tick from where it says, Hide inactive icons. Click apply. Or leave the tick in the box to hide inactive icons and instead click on Custom. Select the program you want in the list.(If it's there) To the right, you will see a drop down arrow. Click that, then from the drop down box choose always show.

 

[ajfudge]

@UsernameIssues,
Thanks for that info. I thought that it could be the program's fault and your answer satisfies confirms it. As for the other programs sitting in my system tray, their icons are consistently present. Just bummed out that there's no other way around this.

 

[quickdraw2011]

Microsoft excerpt:
The system tray (in short: systray, nowadays also called taskbar notification area) is the icon strip normally located near the right end of the task bar, next to the clock.
Some Windows 7 installations show a peculiar defect in that some systray icons disappear or, rather, do not appear, when the system is booted and the user logs on. The problem is even more prevalent on systems with autologon. The most frequently affected icons seem to be the speaker icon (sound volume) and the power/energy icon.

 

[UsernameIssues]

It is sad that the OP has explorer.exe crashing from time to time :-(

A script that watches for explorer to crash might help the OP. In the video below, MagicDisc restarts faster than Task Manager updates... so I added the Process ID column so that you can see the old and new instance running.



The script "4TrayIcons.exe" uses very little RAM and CPU... but note that there was only 256MB assigned to the W7 32bit VM running that script in the video. Notice the differences in the RAM used by several things when 1.5GB was assigned:



You can add as many programs as you wish to this one script and it should restart them all. Let me know if you see a flaw in the method/code. I have not been trained for this kind of stuff.

;AutoIt Version: 3.3.8.1
#NoTrayIcon

While 1 ;loops forever waiting for explorer to crash

    Do ;waits for desktop to disappear
        Sleep(1000)
    Until Not WinExists("Program Manager")

    ;restarts explorer/desktop for you
    Run(@WindowsDir & "\explorer.exe", @WindowsDir)

    ;waits for the desktop to appear
    WinWait("Program Manager", "", 5)

    ;give the desktop time to create the notification area
    Sleep(3000)

    ;;;;first program to close and restart
    ;usually closes on first try, unless the system is busy
    For $i = 1 To 100 ;try 100 times to close the program
        ProcessClose("MagicDisc.exe")
        Sleep(100)
        If Not ProcessExists("MagicDisc.exe") Then ExitLoop
    Next
    Run("C:\Program Files\MagicDisc\MagicDisc.exe")

    ;;;;second program to close and restart
    ;usually closes on first try, unless the system is busy
    For $i = 1 To 100 ;try 100 times to close the program
        ProcessClose("replace-this-name.exe")
        Sleep(100)
        If Not ProcessExists("replace-this-name.exe") Then ExitLoop
    Next
    Run("C:\Program Files\MagicDisc\replace-this-name.exe")

    ;;;;;you can copy/paste/change more code below here for more programs to close & restart


WEnd

You can download AutoIt3 from here. Once installed, try the steps shown in the video below to copy/paste/save/compile the code above.



AutoIt uses UPX to compress the compiled code. That might set off your antivirus tool (more about that here). If it does, delete the compiled file and put the text file in the Startup folder instead. Or you can visit the AutoIt forums to learn how to turn off the UPX compression.

Here is a VirusTotal scan of the compiled code. Only Jiangmin did not like the UPX. Without UPX compression, VirusTotal showed two AV tools that did not like the compiled code. And finally, as a pure text file - no AV tools flagged the code.

But the OP really should find the reason for explorer crashing...

Hope this helps.