Systray (Notification Area) problem

I have 2 problems in which I need help from you.

1.- On the systray (notification area on the taskbar where the clock and other icons are shown) the little encircled Chevron (<) that expands or shorten the notification area (so you can see the hidden icons) is MISSING. I know that there are hidden icons but I am unable to access them because I am unable to EXPAND the notification area. I need some help to bring the chevron there.

2.- [Notification Area] - This area controls the far right section of the Taskbar adjacent to the edge of the screen where the clock is located if you have it activated.
[Customize Notifications] - This dialogue box displays a list of Current Items and Past Items that have appeared in the Notification Area. Click on any item in either section and a drop down box will appear with three options.
[Hide When Inactive] - The default choice. Useful for items that you want to become visible when they have information to report.
[Always Hide] - A good choice for items you want to run in the background but don’t want a notification until you make the choice to expand the Notification Area.
[Always Show] - Useful for items which you want to monitor for both activity and inactivity so they are always available at a glance.
The second problem is that when I try to customize the notifications there is only one FIXED option which is "Hide when Inactive ". There is NO drop down menu to show the other TWO options ( "always hide" and "always show "). I need help on how to solve this problem so all the three options are shown there.

 

Thanks for responding but the problem is that since the option to "always Hide" is not there, I am unable to use it to bring the chevron back. I think it will require some registry tweaking to solve these two problems.

 

Hi PeteC and thanks for your suggestion. I will try it but... Where is that "EVENT VIEWER" that you mention and HOW do I access it???

 

Hi, PeteC I did what you suggested and ran the sfc /scannow and no files needed to be replaced, all was Ok but it did not solve the problem. I'm waiting for more suggestions. Thanks.

 

Sometimes this works :-
Go to Start, Run and type in services.msc and OK. Scroll down your list of Services and find both SSDP Discovery Service and Universal Plug and Play Device Host. Double-click on each and under Startup Type, choose Disable and OK.

 

Hi BurrWalnut, Thanks for your suggestion. I have not tried it yet because I have been out of town but I will try to do hat tomorrow on my brother's computer (that's the one having the problem, not mine, I posted this problem on his behalf because he does not speak english well).

I will let you know the results. Keep an eye on this, this is a HOT issue, I found other people having this same problem (on other forums) and to date there have been no solution.

The last resort (suggested by phone by HP technical support for HP Pavillion 542X which is the computer in question) is to Re-install the OS but I think that's an extreme solution for an issue that is only an inconvenience and not a mayor problem that may adversely affect your PC functionality.

 

mazaprin--

Did you try what TonyT suggested? To elaborate, find a blank spot on the Taskbar, right click|Properties|Customize. Click on an icon's listing in the Behavior column|click Down arrow. You can change whether to hide, show, etc.
I am not saying this will solve your problem, but based on your response, I wonder if you had tried to access that window and knew how to change the hiding of those icons.
Lots of ideas about restoring the Chevron here
http://www.google.com/search?source...2004-31,GGLD:en&q="Notification+Area"+Chevron
although the most logical have already been mentioned.

 

Hi Welshjim, I appreciate your suggestion and we are not novices here, I would say we are all intermediate experienced and... yes, I have tried everything that a savvy user would do.

I believe I explained ago that when I go to the Notification area properties (specifically the BEHAVIOR on the "Customize notifications" window) to the right of every icon that appears on systray there is a TAB that normally has a drop down list where you can choose among 3 options: "Hide when inactive ", "always show" or "always hide ". I explained that the only option on each TAB for each icon is "Hide when inactive" and this is a FIXED option, the drop down list will not show when I press the little arrow, it does not work (that was explained on the "Second problem" on this Topic header).

And BurrWalnut, I was about to try your suggestion about disabling the Plug'n Play and the SSDP and I realized that I already tried that with "Taskbar Repair" utility that has several sutomatic fixes (yours is one of them disabling SSDP and Plug' n Play) and it did not work either and I even tried all the fixes on the list one by one but these fixes are only for one thing: to enable or disable, to show all or not show the icons on systray, to hide or disable the entire notification area, etc, etc.. but there is NO FIX that will bring back the Chevron (<) nor bring back the DROP DOWN list on the customization of the notification area.

I will have to send an Email to Fred Langa (the Guru of computers) and if he can not solve this, well, nobody will.

Keep glued to this topic because I think not even Microsoft has a solution for this and the different roads are taking us to a dead end street where you will have to reinstall your OS to fix this little inconvenience (I personally think it will take a registry tweaking to fix both problems BUT... Who knows the right tweaking?
That's the main question here.

 

Checking the mention box is the only way I can get the Chevrons to appear.

I myself have the Taskbar set to two lines high. And set to Autohide when not being used.

I also have the screen size set so that it and the Taskbar do not interfer with each other.

I just checked and 98SE is set up the same way.

BillyBob

 

Hi BillyBob, of course that's the first thing I checked and rechecked I tried all the options inside the taskbar properties window and I checked everything there, I even ran chkdsk and sfc, I doublechecked my system configuration (display, resolution 1024X768, etc...) all is OK nothing seems to be out of the usual configuration.

There are other people on other Forums that are having the same problem with the missing Chevron and the FIXED option of "Hide when inactive" on the behavior window of systray.

I want to mention here that I just emailed a copy of this topic header explaining both problems to Fred Langa (I am a subscriber to Langa List) and now I will wait for a response.

I will also Email a copy to Dan Gookin (author of several computer books).

 

If this problem just started try system restore.

 

That would be the first solution that I came up with BUT... System Restore has been purged, I set the size at 2% so it only stores the last 2weeks worth of restore points. I restored the farthest back restore point and the problem was still there. It seems that these 2 problems originated 3 or 4 months ago and I did not notice up until recently.

I also have Acronis True Image 8 and I store the Full system images (one per week) on an external USB 2.0 HD but I only keep the last 5 or 6 images, so I restored the oldest Image (about 5 weeks or so ago) and the problem was still there, so I restored the latest Image to return to my present state.

If I could go back to 2-3 months ago on system restore or ATI Image maybe I would be able to return to a state where everything was fine with the Systray but now I have to look for a solution to fix these 2 problems and it seems that nobody knows the solution.