Taskbar Speaker Icon Missing and Greyed out on Customize Taskbar...

Nyarlathotep · 20 Jun 2014

Hey all, my girlfriend is running Win 7 Home... she has always had the default Windows speaker "volume" icon down on her task bar by her clock. She uses it all the time to switch between her speakers and her headset, where she right clicks on the icon and selects "playback devices" and then changes between her soundcard/speakers and her usb headset.

Anyway, it disappeared last night.

Now open Taskbar, click on the "customize" link, get the window to select which icons appear... on the speaker "volume" icon under behaviors, it is set to "show icon and notifications"...

HOWEVER.

Then at the bottom click the link for "turn system icons on or off" and on that window, the icon is greyed out and set to OFF and it can not be changed to ON.

She's been bugging the heck out of me ever since to fix it.

We have no idea what changed it, or how it got changed.... we just know its been there and she's used it, for the past two years, and now its suddenly not there.

Any suggestions?

Brink · 20 Jun 2014

Hello Nyarlathotep,

You might see if step 9 in Option Two in the tutorial below may be able to enable the Volume icon again.

System Icons - Enable or Disable

Hope this helps, :)
Shawn

Nyarlathotep · 20 Jun 2014

Thank you, that did solve the problem! :)

Brink · 20 Jun 2014

You're most welcome. :)

Len62Can · 02 Sep 2014

Brink said:

Hello Nyarlathotep,

You might see if step 9 in Option Two in the tutorial below may be able to enable the Volume icon again.

System Icons - Enable or Disable

Hope this helps, :)
Shawn

Shawn - That worked for me as well. Thanks so much!!

Ed

techdude88 · 15 Sep 2017

Open the Local Group Policy Editor with Start: Run: gpedit.msc

In the left pane under ‘User Configuration’ expand ‘Administrative Templates’ and then select the ‘Start Menu and Taskbar’ folder.

Click on the Setting column to sort the list alphabetically.

Scroll down and select ‘Remove the volume control icon’ entry and double click.

If it’s set to ‘Disabled’ change the setting to ‘Not Configured’ and vice versa and then click on the OK button.

Exit gpedit.msc (a.k.a. the Local Group Policy Editor).

Logging off and then logging back in should be sufficient to correct the problem; if not try restarting the system.
NOTE: After logging off and logging back in, you might need to also go into 'Control Panel: All Control Panel Items: Notification Icons' and change the behavior for the Volume icon to 'Show icon and notifications' before the sound icon will appear.

NOTE: The registry tweak download fix followed by a restart did not work for me, only the above described procedure worked. Since the 'Remove the volume control icon' policy setting was already set to 'Disabled' it appeared that the setting was correct and did not need to be changed, so that's why I first tried the registry tweak download fix without success. Gotta luv Windoze!