Notification area icons missing in Vista
Q: I lost the Volume Control icon in the Notification area. When I open Taskbar properties and click the Notification tab, the checkboxes for Clock, Volume and Network are grayed out.
Note: Simply logging off and logging back to your user account helps in most cases, if this is not caused by a Policy setting. Alternately, you may try terminating and restarting Explorer.exe to see if that works.
If that does not help, this may be due to Policies enabled in your system. If your computer is not part of a company network, use the instructions below to unlock the Notification area icons.
Download trayicons.reg and save to Desktop. Right-click on the file and choose Merge. Click Yes when prompted for confirmation.
More information
Note that the previously mentioned file trayicons.reg removes the following Registry-based Policy values in your system:
1. HideSCAVolume
2. HideSCANetwork
3. HideClock
4. HideSCAPower
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Comment by Neil Brenchley on 9 April 2008:
Many thanks for the fix for missing tray icons in Vista. Worked a treat. Don’t know why the icons disappeared in the first place, but grateful to resolve the problem.
Pingback by Icona volume scompare in Vista | Evoitalia Blog Web Acency on 27 April 2008:
[...] il problema in maniera diversa, cercando la soluzione in rete e l’ho trovata. Questo articolo (inglese) spiega esattamente la procedura, e [...]
Comment by Lucky on 27 April 2008:
Thanks, I had the same problem and I resolved thanks to your article. I also wrote an article on my blog for users Italians.