Windows 7 Odd tray icon behavior

[Beaverkilla]

Hi, I upgraded to win7 RC 64bit from Vista ulti 64bit.

No problems except this ... (and start menu - I fixed that though)

(see image) - I don't have any tray icon icons ... they're all gone except sound (which doesnt open anything when i click it), xfire and pidgin (msn). If I end explorer.exe and restart it sometimes it helps, but more than often it doesn't.

Just wondering if anyone else encountered this problem and if so, how'd you fix it?

Ty, Beaverkilla

 

[ShaggyTDawg]

You appear to have the same problem I'm having. You'll notice that there's a lot of empty space between your icons that show and the clock. If you mouse over that area, you'll likely see the mouse over edge highlight and the mouse over context info. There's something that's causing the icons to go blank after some period of time that I'm trying to track down.

The only thing I've seen so far that might work is finding the .exe for the application, right clicking it, choosing properties, and setting it to compatibility mode for Vista or XP SP3. I haven't tried those yet, but it sounds like a work around for the time being.

 

[reghakr]

Go to Start > Control Panel > Notification Icons and check the box at the bottom of the screen.

Always show all icons and notifications on the taskbar

 

[ShaggyTDawg]

Go to Start > Control Panel > Notification Icons and check the box at the bottom of the screen.

Always show all icons and notifications on the taskbar

Sigh... This isn't my issue. I don't want all of the icons to show in the tray at all times, and I'm well aware of that feature(I've worked IT for some time on XP, and know my way around Vista pretty well, which most of that applies in Windows 7).

My issue is some sort of bug that causes the icons to still be there, but the actual images in the icons go blank. See picture below.

Here you can see I've moused over my Thunderbird icon (the mouse cursor doesn't show up in the screen grab). The mouse over highlight still works, as well as the mouse over context box. But the icon itself doesn't appear visible. There's another icon to the left of it that is doing the same thing.

Here you can see the same thing happens for the hidden icons. I've moused over the Windows Update icon (even microsoft apps are having the issue!!!) and you can see 3 other blanks where there are icons that have disappeared visually.

The icons still function as normal. I can pull back up the corresponding apps or notifications that they are representative of. This is purely a cosmetic issue, but one that can slow you down a lot when you have to literally hunt for the icon you're looking for.

 

[reghakr]

This is purely a cosmetic issue, but one that can slow you down a lot when you have to literally hunt for the icon you're looking for.

that was the reasoning for my post.

 

[ShaggyTDawg]

that was the reasoning for my post.

It doesn't solve my problem though. Even if they all are shown in the tray at all times, the icons still experience the same symptoms. It will only make my hunting one click quicker by not having to expand the hidden icons. I still have to mouse over all the invisible icons to see what they are, even if all icons are "always shown in notification area".

 

[reghakr]

You say you upgraded, so you didn;t do a "clean" install?

 

[ShaggyTDawg]

I'm not the OP on this thread so that wasn't me that said I did an upgrade.

But I did do an upgrade. Everything has worked fine so far. The only problems I had to fix was out of date drivers, but that was a simple fix.

This isn't an issue to do a full reinstall over. While it's the easiest solution to just about any diagnosis, it's over used in my opinion. I've had pretty good success with tracking down the specific issue rather that "starting from scratch". The actual problems will never get solved if everyone just wipes clean and starts over. They're just going to reinstall all the same apps that produced the problem more than likely. So I'm not even considering a "clean install".

 

[reghakr]

No disrespect, but a "clean" install will wipe out everything on the hard drive,

I'd prefer to keep posting to find s solution, but when the thread gets 5 pages long with no solution, that's when I recommend a :clean: install

 

[ShaggyTDawg]

I didn't think there was any kind of indication that I didn't understand what a clean install is. I know good and well what it is... And no disrespect... But a clean install is wiping out everything on the partition that the OS in question is installed on... not necessarily the whole hard drive. If the whole hard drive is just one partition, then yes you're effectively wiping the whole hard drive, but for those of us that know better than to have everything in one partition and/or use multiple OS's on one machine, we just wipe out partitions, not whole hard drives.

Complete side note, how did you get the little badge for 365 days registered, when it says you registered in January 2009? I call hax!!! ;-)

 

[reghakr]

It's been so long since I've done It, you may be right.

Complete side note, how did you get the little badge for 365 days registered, when it says you registered in January 2009? I call hax!!! ;-)

What exactly do you mean by this?

 

[ShaggyTDawg]

I'm just kidding about the hax part. If you look under your name on each of these forum posts, there are small icons. The on furthest to the right looks like a flip calandar w/ the number "12" on it. If you mouse over it, it says "365 Days Registered". I was joking/poking fun at the fact that you have a little badge that says you've been registered for a year or more, yet it says your "Join Date" is January 2009.

On a further update to this issue I'm having I've tried the process below.

1. Back up the Registry by creating a restore point.
2. Go to Start > Run (or Windows-key + R), type in regedit and hit OK.
3. Navigate to the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Cla sses\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Wi ndows\CurrentVersion \TrayNotify.
4. Delete the values IconStreams and PastIconsStream.
5. Open up the Task Manager (Ctrl + Shift + Esc), go to the Processes tab, select explorer.exe and click End Process.
6. Open the Applications tab and click New Task at the bottom-right of the window.
7. In the message box that pops up type in explorer.exe and hit OK.
8. Explorer.exe will reload, and the missing icons should now be back in the system-tray where they belong.
9. Then if the volume bar isnt there, go to taskbar properties (where the volume was gray) and simply tick the box.

I found this on Link Removed.

I'm letting it sit to see if this fixes the problem(The icons tend to disappear after a few minutes). I already have one icon that's disappeared, but it's an app that's had a lot of compatibility issues and I don't think has ever worked correctly in the tray. It's a standalone exe that's a .net framework app and it crashes for lots of different reasons, so I don't think it's experiencing these symptoms for the same reason.

Although the thought just crossed my mind that it might be what's triggering this to begin with. If the above solution doesn't work, then I'll try closing that app for a while and see if that resolves it.

 

[ShaggyTDawg]

It's been so long since I've done It, you may be right.

I am right... that's basic hard drive partitioning 101. Anyone who actually knows how to do technical support would know that. Hard drive partitioning is something that comes up all the time in tech support and computer work.

Good practice is to always have your programs and OS on one partition, and keep all of your data (Ex. My Documents, Pictures, Music, etc...) on a different partition (or even different hard drive). That way if and when you do have to wipe your OS (be it to solve a tech support issue, upgrade, or change of operating system) then you don't have to worry about your data.

 

[reghakr]

No reason to shout, I'm a software guy more than a hardare guy

I know about patrtitioning, just wasn't sure what Windiws 7 did on install.

 

[ShaggyTDawg]

My problem seems to be resolved.

The registry edit did not solve the issue (at least not on its own).

Closing the app I had mentioned did solve my problem. It seems that this app was some how corrupting icon cache in Windows 7. I imagine it's because this app attempts to update its own tray icon every second or so with a network utilization graph.

Moral of the story is, apps that try to constantly update their icons (possibly just .net framework apps) may cause problems, especially if they never work to begin with. This particular app works fine in Windows XP and in Vista, but has yet to work correctly in the system tray in Windows 7. After time it would eventually cause other icons to disappear visually, but still remain as far as their clickable/functional objects are concerned.

I suspect this will be fixed with a program update, or possibly, in this case, an update to the .net framework.