Volume, Battery (Power) or Network Icon Disappear or Missing from Vista Taskbar Notification Area (System Tray)
In Windows Vista notification area (previously known as system tray or simply systray) at the end of the taskbar, there are always a few system icons that show status and allow adjustment control of some system components, such as clock, network connections, sound volume and battery power. If any of these system icons are missing or disappearing from the notification system tray in Vista, users can easily make these invisible hidden icons to unhidden and appear visible again in the Vista taskbar’s notification area.
To fix and restore the missing system icons in Vista notification area or system tray, right click on the black/empty space on the system tray itself, or on the taskbar. In the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties dialog window that appears, click on Notification Area tab if it’s not already there.
In the System Icons section, tick the check box for Clock, Volume, Network or Power components to display the corresponding icons in system tray.
Sometimes, the check boxes may be disabled and grayed out probably due to third party drivers that want to show manufacturer’s icon instead. Thus users cannot change the setting to display the system icons at taskbar. In this case, click on Customize button in the Icons section at the end of Hide inactive icons option. Locate the icon items that represents the component or program you want to display in notification area, and then select Show or Hide when inactive from the behavior drop down list. Make sure it’s not Hide that’s been selected.
If the check boxes are grayed out or disabled, there is a fix to show the notification are system icons again.
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January 3rd, 2009 15:27
Thank you…I was so worried, and I thought I will have to take my laptop to the Sony Showroom, and the nearest one here is around 12 kms from my home….
But you solved my problem within seconds…thank you very much
January 1st, 2009 02:11
[...] of these system icons can disappear, missing or hiding from systray area. The easy solution is to re-enable the showing of system icons on Notification Area tab of Taskbar and Start Menu Properties. However, sometimes, even the [...]
December 28th, 2008 18:36
I’ve suffered with this Vista problem for over a year. The solution that works reliably is the “kill explorer.exe” solution - this always works, and doesn’t require a restart. Thanks for your help everyone - I got the solution from here.
December 28th, 2008 07:31
Listen To Sherru!
It Workss Seriously!
December 23rd, 2008 14:47
The solution of ending the explorer process and restarting it works perfect!!
You have to make sure and go back into the Taskbar and select power and network status,etc.
Thanks to Shannon and Sherru for the follow-up explanation!
Early Merry Christmas and HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
December 21st, 2008 11:38
I don’t know if this works every time, but it just worked now … go to System, then Device Manager, then to Sound, disable that (don’t restart), and then enable (don’t restart), and it’s back up.
December 3rd, 2008 09:23
Hey, great advice, it works EVERY time… meaning this problem keeps happening to me! What the heck is going on? Is there anyway that I can get rid of the iconstreams and never have them come back? what is an iconstream anyways?
This is really frustrating… Vista is starting to really piss me off!
November 29th, 2008 08:44
“Shannon is right. If any of the icons go away, all you have to do is open task manager, go to the processes tab, end the process called “explorer.exe”. When you do this, the start bar should disappear. Next, all you do is in the task manager, click File, then Run and type in “C:\Windows\explorer.exe” (but without the quotation marks). Then, the start bar comes back, and all the icons should be there! Great job Shannon.”- Jimmy
I followed exactly this and it solved the problem. The battery icon reappeared promptly.
thanks!
November 16th, 2008 08:03
Excellent solution!!
thumbs up…
November 3rd, 2008 08:24
Somehow, all the options are greyed out and when I checked the customised, all were set to be “hide when inactive”. It’s really annoying as the power, volume icons just disappears for no reason suddenly.
October 7th, 2008 02:05
Thanks for the solution, ending the Explore.exe and then restarting it solved the problem on my Dell Inspiron
October 2nd, 2008 16:59
Comment #19 worked to get my battery status back, but not my audio controls. Maybe a reboot will help there? Whatever the case is, it’s time for me to put myself to sleep, forget the computer.
October 1st, 2008 00:08
I played a few settings to make protection … Administrative tools / local security policy / security option … and do not know what I did as the network icon appears as disabled, but I still connection.
September 28th, 2008 14:36
Comment # 19 worked perfectly for me, just disable then re-enable the battery in device manager and the power option gets un-grayed
September 21st, 2008 15:10
““What would be hiding the volume/clock?
I can’t get them to show up.”
You’ll have to edit the registry to repair those.
BACKUP your registry first before doing the following:
1. Click Winkey + R to open the Run Command box and type “regedit”.
2. Click Edit/Find and type “iconstreams”.
3. Delete all KEYS with the name “iconstreams” and “pasticonstreams” until they can’t be found in the registry.
4. END EXPLORER.EXE AND RUN IT AGAIN.
THIS IS AN AWESOME SOLUTION !!!
THANK YOU VERY MUCH..