Taskbar (XP)

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Things that are supposed to start up and show in the task bar area are not showing . What can I do?
Lennymay

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Do you really mean the task bar, or the system tray (the small area in the lower right corner)?

If you meant the system tray, it may hide items you haven’t used in a while. Right click an empty part of the taks bar, and select Properties from the pop-up menu. At the bottom of the Task Bar tab, you’ll see a check box and a command button related to hiding unused items.

If this does not apply to you situation, please be more specific – which “things” do not appear in the task bar?

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I mean the system tray. I know about programs being hidden and this is not the case. If I look in task manager, the program is there but it is not showing in the system tray and it should be.

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This is an interesting one – maybe very obscure, since I haven’t heard anyone else say anything. Recently, I started using Mailwasher Pro and had it running minimized at startup. I blamed it on Mailwasher and wrote to them because SOMETIMES there would be no icon in the tray and the EXE would show up in Task Mgr, under Processes. I now don’t know if it IS a Mailwasher problem or something with XP. And, there have been LOTS of glitches reported about the system tray in XP, not the least of which is the one Hans described about hidden entries. Mine change every once in awhile of their own accord and usually a reboot will fix it. Hang in there and maybe we’ll hear from someone who knows an answer. By the way, could YOU give us a specific list of which programs are running but don’t appear in the tray, please?

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There are some additional ways to probably fix the notification area from Kelly’s A to Z under “N” for Notification Area:

1) Tweaks and Tips Regedits/VB Scripts Line 156: Disable SSDP and uPNP Services –this download will run the regedit for you automatically.

2) A manual edit:
Right click My Computer/Manage. Expand Services and Applications then Click on Services. A list of services appears in the right column. Scroll down to the the SSDP and uPnP Service. Right click each, choose properties. Change the text next to “Startup type:” to Disabled. Or, if you are running XP SP1 uninstall UPnP from Add/Remove Windows Components.

3) A workaround is to: R-click the taskbar & select Task Manager. Under Processes tab select Explorer.exe and End Task; Under Applications tab select New Task; Type in Explorer; click OK. Unfortunately this workaround has to be repeated with each cold/warm boot, so hopefully the ones above will be permanent.

Also Tray Minimizer V 5.0 may help keep third parties like Windowasher from making items disappear–if that’s the cause.

And the term that allows telo to be anal has only been officially available since October 25, 2001.

SMBP

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It’s easy to repair the taskbar (if you are comfortable with Regedit) and that should take care of it. You may want to back up your QuickLaunch shortcuts first. Close any open desktop and taskbar applications, open your registry and find:

HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionExplorerStuckRects2

Delete the entire “StuckRects2” key and reboot. When Windows restarts the taskbar should be set back to a default working state. (from Winguides)

This may be anal, but the systray part of the taskbar is really called the Notification Area

Edit – Start > Logoff and then logging back on again should make them all show as well

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