Taskbar Icons (XP)

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On my laptop, all of the icons on the right don’t appear on bootup. For example, I’m sometimes missing “Safely Remove Hardware” which I need. If I unlock, and remove the quick launch checks, then rebooting shows all the icons. What’s going on, and how to correct?

keith

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(Assuming you haven’t tried this already):

Right click a blank part of the Taskbar.

Click Properties and make sure you’re not hiding inactive icons, locking the taskbar or any other setting you don’t want.

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Nice thought, but it’s not that. Had tried it before.

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The “Safely Remove Hardware” will only appear when a USB device is attached that needs to de-attached before unplugging.

What other ICONs are NOT showing?

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

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Not so: I’ve a swappable CD vs. floppy drive, so it should always show…yes? Any one of the other icons might not show, though I’m not so interested in the others: volume, Norton antivirus autoprotect. But what’s so interesting, to reiterate, is that if I turn off QuickLaunch, they’ll all appear upon next reboot. Anyway, I doubt it’s a big problem…just quirky and annoying.
And, As long as we’re mentioning “Safely Remove Hardware”: where is that icon stored? And…can I both remove one of the drives and put in the other at the same time…or can I just safely remove without replacint (if the latter–hardly useful at all!!

keith

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Are you say that your “CD vs. floppy drive” are USB devices?

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

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No: on the bottom of my Dell Inspiron Laptop there’s a slot into which I can snap either my floppy drive or my CD drive. They’re not USB. And to interchange them when “hot” I need “Safely Remove Hardware.” Also you didn’t answer my two other questions: 1. If it is functioning, can I remove the one, and replace it with the other, all in the same movement? and 2. Where in the file system is “Safely Remove Hardware” located (what is it’s file name). If I knew that, I could put a shortcut somewhere, and not care that it doesn’t show up on the right taskbar as an “active” item.

keith

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Hey guys, all this above and below are interesting but don’t address the main issue: How do I stabilize the icons presented on the task tray! When coming up I can get several, a couple, or none; some of which I use all the time (i.e. PrintScreen). I know about ‘Hide Icons’. Can’t believe MSoft beta test did not uncover this flaw. Any one with a ‘better idea’?

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I too have suddenly started having problems with Taskbar Status Area (System Tray? Notification Area? – when will consistent naming arrive? ) Icons not appearing on Startup from a cold boot – and Task Manager tells me all the programs are running. This erratic behaviour is driving me

Now, sometimes (like yesterday morning) I get all the icons I expect including the Volume, Restore, PC Card, AC Power, ClipMate, Outlook, ZoneAlarm, AVG Antivirus, Roboform, Tweakmaster, ZipMagic, DU Meter, Network Connection and a couple of others that I can’t remember off the top of my head .

Other times (twice), like this morning all that came up were DU Meter and Network Connection

Seems Windows unXplained Performance sticks again

I do hope someone out there can shed some light on this mysterious behavour

Don’t know if it’s significant but I’m using an IBM ThinkPad A22p with 512 MB RAM with Windows XP Pro

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Have you found any answers. If so, I’d like to know them because have the same problem.

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Read all the stuff again. As you can see for yourself none of the above took a shot at the question of Notification Area icon inconsistencies, whether at bootup or not. If there is a real answer they don’t know what it is, or don’t want to tell us. Can’t believe the latter is true in this forum. Good luck…

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If there is a real answer they don’t know what it is, or don’t want to tell us

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[/indent]Who exactly is ‘they’? We all do our best to help each other, regardless of the titles individuals may have. I don’t believe it’s true in this forum either….more likely, it’s a sticky problem that doesn’t have a pat answer. Rule 17 sums that up (although there’s no demands being made here) – and if anyone does find an answer, you can bet your bananas we’ll post it! Please don’t feel that it’s “us against them” – everyone here puts their pants on one leg at a time.

Best,

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Be Patient, folks! I would bet there are a lot of us looking for the answer to the “icons in the tray” problem. I’m “just an ol’ user” myself and I periodically have the problem. I usually fiddle around with the hide-don’t hide selection, reboot, the problem goes away for awhile and then comes back. Sometimes finding these solutions takes a LOT of time, and sometimes they never get solved ’cause they’re buried too deeply in the Windows code. Hang in there with us. The problem in this thread is that it got commandeered for a different topic!

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I know it may sound too simple but when I had the same type of problem where the

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There ya go….. it just goes to show ya…… What a complex spider web we have with this Windows beast! You may have hit the nail right on the head. I think I’ll try turning off that gouping thingie too. It just happened to me again yesterday (icons not showing up on reboot) and in retrospect, I remember that yesterday I had a bunch of browser windows that had gotten “grouped” into one button on the taskbar. That seldom happens to me, but in this case, after closing everything and rebooting the system, I had two icons that were missing from the tray. It took considerable fiddling to get them back.

I’m gonna try your idea…..

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I beleive XP does not listen to you when you make changes. XP is like a child that turns a deaf ear towards a parent or authority figure. I have had a few such problems. First, the hide unused icons option in the sys tray took a few repeated implimentations to finally stick. At this point I am yelling at the views option in the Garbage Bin, me wanting to see the garbage listed by date deleted and XP wanting an alphabetical arrangement. I personally beleive all these changed system settings only take true hold after System Restore makes a new back-up or three.

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To see what has been fixed in SR1 see http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?…p1_hotfixes.asp%5B/url%5D

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

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I just thought for the heck of it, I’d come back (six days later) and comment that I tried your “counrty boy’s” workaround with turning off the grouping of icons function and didn’t have any missing tray icons until this morning. My PC stays on 24/7 but usually in the morning I reboot the thing ’cause that’s what I got used to doing in Win95 and Win98. This morning on reboot, the Volume icon is missing. I went in to try to get it to show back up and cycling it off and back on doesn’t seem to help. So, for what it’s worth the problem will have to get fixed in SP1 (yeah, sure)

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I have found that in most cases when a icon is missing in the systray is because the machine is not finished in booting. If you have Windows update or any other updating to be done on reboot, it may slow down the process of a COMPLETE boot. Yes, Windows is a multi task system, but only when it is completly started.

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

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Big Al,

Sorry to hear it didn

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Ok, I did a “resrart” yesterday and noticed today, that some of my icons were missing. I did another restart and they were still missing. So I did a power down (turned OFF) , and then a clean power up and they are ALL there.

Al, are you rebooting or powering down and then a restart daily?

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

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Windows XPP : I have 15 icons in my Systray and 60 taskbar icons. Taskbar is never a problem, but Systray sometimes only partially restores after an Explorer halt. I find that logging off and on again (not rebooting) – a quick process in this OS – solves the problem.
The Quicklaunch taskbar folder is found in :

E:Documents and SettingsUserApplication DataMicrosoftInternet ExplorerQuick Launch (E: and User will differ on other systems.)

To get this particular folder to kick-in, you need to log on as ‘User’ (or equivalent). Guest and other aliases will not do. They have their own Quicklaunch, which will probably not be the same as yours. If you knew this, or always log on as admin, sorry, the point will be irrelevant.

Rgds

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No, I hardly ever power off, unless I need to physically work on the machine. I do a warm-boot (restart) and this morning the icons were OK on the second reboot. Sometimes it takes a couple of boots, but I don’t think powering off is the answer. I only have a half-dozen or so elements in the systray (McAfee, ClipMate, Tardis, Volume, etc.) whereas look at what MerC said and he’s got quite a few. From what I’ve read in other forums and newsgroups, this is a pretty global XP problem connected with the running of systray. I suppose we’ll just have to wait until Microsoft steps up to it…..

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My : I agree that it’s a fairly global problem. It’s a little bugaboo that doesn’t really affect productivity and certainly doesn’t qualify as a show stopper, so I presume that’s why it’s never really been fixed.

Now, whether that gets addressed in Service Pack 1 is anyone’s guess. Right up until the last service pack for NT4, I was hoping that they would fix an annoying bug where the sounds control panel applet would crash out unexpectedly, reporting an error in MMSYS32.CPL or something like that. It never did get addressed and I of course had to learn to live with it. I sincerely hope that XP, being the monster that it is, and something they want in everyone’s living room, gets fixed.

Until then, I follow the practice I’ve been using since the wonderful Win95 GUI hit the streets: I disable all the tray icons that I don’t need, or that are redundant, because they’re sitting there sucking up memory, and I force the ones that I use to display. With that tactic I’ve had mucho success, but it’s not for everyone!

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I am running SP1 on my laptop, and have not seen this happen, but I do NOT see very much as it is. So I can NOT tell if it has been fixed or not .

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

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Hi, DaveA !

I have a few units with XPH and one that I just installed it on has the “Safely Remove Hardware” icon is tray. Now, I have never seen this before. What do you mean by “USB device is attached that needs to de-attached before unplugging.”? Unattach the USB connection before unplugging the power to the USB device? Unplugging the system?? Other?

Please advise & expound.
Thanks, Dave .

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On my system(s) the HP CD burner and my Flash Card reader must be turned OFF through the “Safety Remove Hardware” ICON before removing the device from the hub. If I boot up with out these devices plugged in I will not get this “Start up” icon, but once I plug in one of them the ICON will appear in the Systray.

I have found that I have a lot less USB issues if I turn off the devices before removing them.

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

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On my XPP system I use a digital camera and a USB pen drive. Both cause the XP icon about safe removal to appear in the Systray when plugged in. Neither causes any problem if simply pulled out of the hub. However, I also find that the correct use of Safe Removal is a must in Win2k.

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Dave ~

I have the same printer but this “Safety Remove Hardware” icon never appeared before. As I despise junk in my system tray, is there a way to remove it w/o doing a registry hack?

Also, I was hoping that since you are moderator you might know why the formatting of my signature is missing and the formatting I used in your name in my reply is missing as well.

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Having been a beta tester of Windows XP Pro, this icon should be coming on when the USB device requires it is attached. I did NOT have any problems with it during beta or since. I am running 4 machines with XP on ithem and they ALL perform in the same manner. I have attached devices after boot up and it has appeared in the systray. I would NOT remove it, some device may require it.

The following is from http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/…dh_dmt_cgwi.asp%5B/url%5D

Some buses allow devices to be hot-plugged

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

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Dave ~

This is an hp photosmart 1215 and the only item plugged in with a USB. This was not an issue when the unit was running Win98SE. I installed XPH and the icon appeared on the tray. The printer is never unplugged from the unit. When I click on the icon, nothing comes up but ‘Safely Remove Hardware’.

Is it because of the new OS I can’t unplug it w/o notification?

Does it stay in the tray as long as it reads a USB plug is connected?

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Is it because of the new OS I can’t unplug it w/o notification? Yes, I had it when running 2K I think.

Does it stay in the tray as long as it reads a USB plug is connected? Yes, i also have noticed once it is in the systray, it will stay if there ALL devices have been removed. It will look again on restart and fire it up if it finds a device.

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

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Yes it was (is) in Win2k Dave. I use it every day with an In-Circuit-Emulator on USB.

(Come on England!!!!)

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Usually there’s more of the glacier under the water….. On a number of forums I’ve been to, people have reported the inconsistent behaviour of the elements in the system tray. As I said in my earlier post, I’ve been keeping an eye out for possible fixes or solutions. But I have not made this a hot item that I drop everything for because it only happens once in awhile. One of the places I check periodically is the Microsoft Knowledgebase, but so far I’ve not found a specific solution. Close, but no cigar, as they say.

A small sample.

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