cannot add the icon to the taskbar (WinXP SP2)

Topic

New Reply

When I do a cold boot, not a logoff/on, I always get this small error box. Since this doesn’t happen during logoff/on, i believe this is coming from some driver or service. The author is an idiot for not putting the name of the program/service generating the message in the title bar, instead of just the word “Error”. Anyone have any ideas on how to trace this down, again given that it is likely a service/driver and gets initialized prior to me being able to run any individual user-level programs?

Reply | Quote

Replies

Have you tried to use Task Manager to identify the application or process?

You can also download and install the free utility Sysinternals Freeware – Autoruns. It provides a comprehensive overview of everything that starts automatically on your system.

Reply | Quote

Click Start | Run, type EVENTVWR and hit Enter.

On Event Viewer window, select Application on the left pane and double-click each event marked red X “Error” on the right pane. Please post errors description – it will be very helpful.

Reply | Quote

AutoRuns is an interesting program. I’ve used Mike Lin’s StartupCPL program but AutoRuns is a better program with more functionality. That being said, it was of no real use in solving this issue.

As to Kapliub’s suggestion to check the event logs, I had already done that and there are no event records related to this error.

So I needed a more creative solution. Given that I had a text message to work with, I thought that the text must be present inside a program somewhere. Might not have been true if the text was pasted together from a word table but that isn’t too common. Most of the time, error messages are stored as data strings in programs.

I first tried to use Yahoo Desktop search on all files indexed to look for the text string BUT then realized that I wasn’t indexing things like .exe files. So I moved to AgentRansack where I did a search through the 2 logical drives (on *.*) where the program might be starting from. Voila!

The program that is issuing this message is NirSoft’s freeware TurnFlash program (http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/tflash2.html%5B/url%5D). Since all it does is run an icon in the tray that let’s you turn flash on/off, I don’t have any idea why this message might be issued. I use a bunch of this guys programs (all appear to be free) and most work rather well. Unfortunately, he has never return replied to any emails that I have sent him. He uses a Yahoo address, so who knows, maybe everything gets spam blocked. Or maybe he just ignores all incoming emails.

Anyway, problem identified.

Reply | Quote

With “400-500 software applications installed ” there is not enough room to add one more icon?

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

Reply | Quote

Plenty more free space. I guess the program is stupid.

Reply | Quote