Solved *Inconsistent* Tray Icon Disappearance

[Rick1441]

I have a situation where, every time I power up, some of my tray icons are missing (although any associated start-up programs *are* running). But the number that go missing tends to vary at each power-up. I can always get the missing ones to appear just by logging off my account and logging back on, but I shouldn't have to keep doing that.

What makes this situation doubly perplexing is that the pattern is unpredictable. I have 13 icons that are supposed to appear at every power up. (Nine are hidden by design, but varying the hiding options makes no difference whatsoever.) Two of them show up without fail. Five of them show up about 75% of the time (these include the the Windows sound control and battery power icons). Three show up about 40-50% of the time. And the last three almost never show up. Those numbers aren't precise, of course, but give you an idea how erratic the behavior is.

The computer is a Lenovo Thinkpad W530 laptop. This situation has been occurring for almost the whole time I've had the computer (about five months).

Any idea on what might be going on and I can fix it? Thanks.

 

[maxie]

Hi there ...

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/13102-notification-area-icons-reset.html

 

[MilesAhead]

What does "Nine are hidden by design" mean exactly?

 

[Rick1441]

What does "Nine are hidden by design" mean exactly?

All I meant is that in "Customize" I have "Hide Icons and Notifications" selected for nine of the thirteen icons. I have experimented with setting all of them to "Show Icon and Notifications" but I still get exactly the same type of inconsistent icon appearance/non-appearance pattern I described. I.e., it makes no difference whether any given icon is set to show up in the main tray or in the "hidden icons" pop-up area

 

[Rick1441]

Hi there ...

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/13102-notification-area-icons-reset.html

Thanks for the suggestion, but unfortunately that didn't work. It did some "cleanup," and moved some hidden icons to the tray and vice versa, but the original problem I described remains.

Any more suggestions?

 

[Rick1441]

Even if no one has a solution (and based on what I've gathered from Googling I doubt anyone does...) does anyone understand *why* logging out and logging back in causes all the missing notification area icons to reappear? Indeed, the icons that are most often absent tend to show up the *fastest* when I log off / log on, which is counter-intuitive.

 

[maxie]

Some thing is blocking your Icons to load occasionally .. Read the Link below.. That might give you a clue to what is causing the issue ..


http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/179159-troubleshoot-application-conflicts-performing-clean-startup.html

 

[MilesAhead]

What does "Nine are hidden by design" mean exactly?

All I meant is that in "Customize" I have "Hide Icons and Notifications" selected for nine of the thirteen icons. I have experimented with setting all of them to "Show Icon and Notifications" but I still get exactly the same type of inconsistent icon appearance/non-appearance pattern I described. I.e., it makes no difference whether any given icon is set to show up in the main tray or in the "hidden icons" pop-up area

Ok. I wanted to clarify that in case you were running some utility that manipulates the system tray or hides icons or hides applications to the tray as they may interfere with normal operation.

This may be worth a shot:
How to Clean the Notification Area Icon Cache in Windows 7 & Windows 8

 

[Rick1441]

This may be worth a shot:
How to Clean the Notification Area Icon Cache in Windows 7 & Windows 8

Well, without going into all the detail, let's just say that it looked promising at first but I quickly ended up right where I started. But thanks for the suggestion.

 

[Rick1441]

Some thing is blocking your Icons to load occasionally .. Read the Link below.. That might give you a clue to what is causing the issue ..


http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorial...ation-conflicts-performing-clean-startup.html

Last night I was trying a less-systematic but similar approach, namely experimenting with disabling some start-up programs/utilities, and changing some automatic-start services to "automatic (delayed)." The services-delay trials didn't help my issue, but I *was* making some progress after disabling some start-up exes. In general the more I disabled, the fewer tray icons that would fail to appear upon reboot...though exactly *which ones* would be "back" seemed to vary upon each reboot.

So later I'll try the more systematic approach you linked to. In the meantime, I'm doing this: Of the items that fall in the "icon often or usually fails to show" category, there are only two that I use much. For one of them, a keyboard hotkey instantly gets the icon to appear. And for the other one I have created a simple keyboard shortcut to get it to appear. For the rest that tend to go missing, since I don't use them often I guess it's not a big deal to log off/on to get them to appear when needed.

 

[Rick1441]

Solved it. Without going into all the details of the detective-work, I determined that the culprit is the Classic Start Menu portion of the program Classic Shell (at least the current version, 4.04). I unticked the "start automatically for this user" option in Classic Start Menu, and now all my tray icons are appearing upon reboot.

Fyi, for anyone that uses Classic Start Menu and is seeing this solution, I was able to maintain auto-start functionality for Classic Start menu -- but without interfering with the tray icons -- via an alternate method. Namely, adding a shortcut to ClassicStartMenu.exe to C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup (I'm the only user for this computer).

 

[maxie]

Good news glad you got it sorted ...

 

[Layback Bear]

Rick1441 I have read through this thread several times. I don't see any place where you mentioned that you were using a Classic Shell Program until post # 11 where you tell us you fixed the problem.

MilesAhead in his post #8.

Ok. I wanted to clarify that in case you were running some utility that manipulates the system tray or hides icons or hides applications to the tray as they may interfere with normal operation.

Still no mention of Classic Shell Program.

What am I missing here.

 

[Rick1441]

Rick1441 I have read through this thread several times. I don't see any place where you mentioned that you were using a Classic Shell Program until post # 11 where you tell us you fixed the problem.

MilesAhead in his post #8.

Ok. I wanted to clarify that in case you were running some utility that manipulates the system tray or hides icons or hides applications to the tray as they may interfere with normal operation.

Still no mention of Classic Shell Program.

What am I missing here.

Simple. You're apparently jumping to incorrect conclusions. Classic Shell in fact *doesn't* "manipulate the system tray or hide icons or hide applications to the tray." Classic Shell encompasses (1) Classic Start Menu, (2) Classic Explorer (meaning Windows Explorer), and (3) Classic IE. Its modifications are supposed to be limited to these areas. There is nothing tray-related in CS's features or options. I haven't even seen the tray mentioned in documentation.

BTW, I've done a bit more experimentation and confirmed that the previous version of Classic Shell that I had installed (3.6.8) doesn't interfere as this one does, even if I use the "standard" approach to automatic CS startup (tick the option in settings), instead of the workaround I found that keeps the newer version from interfering with the tray (at least on my system).

 

[Layback Bear]

What I meant was if you would stated you were using Classic Shell their is a good chance that a member of this forum could of given you guidance with your problem.

I'm glad you got it fixed and you also gave a good explanation how you fixed it. That could give other members down the road some good information.

Happy computing.

 

[MilesAhead]

What I meant was if you would stated you were using Classic Shell their is a good chance that a member of this forum could of given you guidance with your problem.

I'm glad you got it fixed and you also gave a good explanation how you fixed it. That could give other members down the road some good information.

Happy computing.

+1. After adding a custom software we tend to use it by habit and forget about it. But all the people working the problem know is what is in the description and specs.