Windows Vista Certain System Tray Icons have Disappeared

For some reason my system tray icons for Avast and my RealTek control panel have disappeared. Avast is still running (i can see the proceses in Task Manager) but the system tray icon no longer shows up.

I have checked Avast and selection to show the icon is checked. When I r-click taskbar, properties, notification area, customise; they show up as past items and the behavior is "show ".

But they don't show........

Any ideas?

Mitch

 

yes. maybe I should have said I already clicked on the "show hidden icon" button. I have also logged off and back on with no result. I restarted - no result. I haven't checked to see if this happens with the other accounts on this machine - will do that now and check back.

 

Update - May have found the culprit

Same situation on all users.

I checked in Windows Defender under Currently Running Programs and those items, as well as others, are shown "not yet classified ". But there appears to be no way to tell defender to "permit" those items.

Thoughts?

Mitch

 

Click the Windows Orb (Start), type regedit, press Enter and navigate to registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\TrayNotify.

In the right-pane there are two entries: IconStreams and PastIconsStream, right-click and delete them, then restart the computer.

Create a system restore point before deleting the registry keys in case anything goes wrong.

Several remedies here http://antemeridiem.wordpress.com/2007/07/13/missing-system-icons-in-windows-vista/

 

BurWalnut,

Thanks for the info, that allowed me to get my Realtek back on the SysTray but no matter what I did, I couldn't get Avast, MyPrinter, keyboard status icons back on. I changed the "appearance" settings in Avast, restarted, changed them back, restarted and still no go.

So, I restored back to a checkpoint on August 28 and that fixed the problem. The only changes between that date and now were uninstall silverlite and a Windows Defender Update. I installed the update and now we will have to see what happens.

Will report back regardless

Mitch