SP2 Seems to Foul Up Notification Area

The SP2 install went well, except that the Notification Area (the old Systray) has some weird behavior. Every couple of days, apparently at random, several of the "non-hidden because active" icons get covered up....after exposing them again via the <<, a single left click on them will expose them again until they disappear again a day or two later (it's the AV and "safely remove hardware" icons that disappear, the local area connection and volume always remain). Any idea why? I also notice that the "Past Items" icon list has a strange collection of icons, like "Finalizing CD ", "Your computer has not been restarted ", and "0 documents pending "....is there anyway to delete those?

 

Steve...no, that's how I ordinarily set them up. But they won't unhide (altho they're set to unhide when active) until I left click 'em. And they work fine for a day or two, then "poof ", they're gone.

 

chrisw --Maybe I misunderstand. If those icons are in the Notification Area when you click on the << button, then the fact they are otherwise hidden is the way Notification Area is supposed to work unless you have set them to "Always Show ". There are three categories for icons in that Area. "Always Hide ", "Hide when inactive ", and "Always Show ".
There is no "unhide when active" option.

 

Jim... "hide when inactive" is "unhide when active" in my jargon....same thing. I've found the whole Notification Area to be a strange mess, it doesn't always synch with the selections under "Customize ".

 

Hi Chris,

NA in Xp has always been "buggy ". Look in KellysCorner for symptoms and fixes under N http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_abc.htm

Regards - Charles

 

Chas....thanks, now I know it's not just me that thinks it's "buggy ".

 

Chris, this fix worked for me. I picked it up in another forum where I posted that my Boot up time was slow and 2 icons disappeared from the Notification area. The following fixed both problems.
=============================================

You can use this fix even if you computer is running great to get a little better performance.

It all seems to be a memory protection issue with the new DEP system provided with SP2. If you disabled DEP your problems will go away. Most systems don't have hardware support for DEP, so it is enabled using software support.
You can access the DEP setting here...
Control Panel/System/Advanced/Performance/Settings/Data Execution Prevention/

The Fix...
Under Control Panel/Performance and Maintenance/System/Advanced, Click the Settings button under "Startup and Recovery ".

Click the Edit button under "System Startup" to edit the boot.ini file in Notepad.

Change /NoExecute=OptIn to /NoExecute=AlwaysOff

Save the boot.ini file and "OK" your way out of there.

Reboot you computer.

If you go to Control Panel/System/Advanced/Performance/Settings/Data Execution Prevention, the DEP setting will be grayed out.

 

balo....verrrrry interesting, I've just implemented it and will post here if it worked or not (at least my machine didn't crash after the reboot).

If anyone else tries this, note that under "The Fix... ", the correct path is Control Panel/System/Advanced (no Performance and Maintenance). But as you said in the end, DEP is greyed out. But what is DEP ???????

 

Data Execution Protection

 

balo....sorry to say, your suggestion didn't work. About every 36 hours, several of the active icons get covered up by the <<, and a single click on each one brings them back again....for another 36 hours or so. But thanks....