Notification Area Icons Missing in Vista

© Ramesh Srinivasan | Windows Vista | 22nd March 2008

When you start your Windows Vista computer, the Volume Control icon may be missing from the Notification area. Also, in the Taskbar properties – Notification tab, the checkboxes for Clock, Volume and Network may remain grayed out.

Simply logging off and logging on 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 (and your computer is not part of a domain), use the instructions below to unlock the Notification area icons.

Registry Fix

Download trayicons.reg and save to Desktop. Right-click on the file and choose Merge. Click Yes when prompted for confirmation.

Note that the previously mentioned REG file removes the following Registry-based Policy values in your system:

  • HideSCAVolume
  • HideSCANetwork
  • HideClock
  • HideSCAPower

Additionally, it clears the IconStreams & PastIconsStream values as suggested in Microsoft KB945011.

Important: After running the .REG file, you need to terminate and restart Explorer.exe for the change to take effect.

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46 Comments

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  1. Sandeep
    said this on Sunday, May 24th 2009 12:20 pm

    Dave, after doing this you need to right click on
    task bar >properties>Notification Area>Check all system icon…

    That really work.. thank you very much Mr. Ramesh Srinivasan you rock.

  2. srikanth
    said this on Sunday, May 24th 2009 7:20 am

    Wow. Worked like a charm. Thanks a ton.

  3. Rouster
    said this on Tuesday, May 12th 2009 7:52 am

    Followed instructions on my HP with Vista 64 Home Premium. Got my missing battery icon back into the notification area. Thanks a bunch!

  4. Paul
    said this on Wednesday, April 15th 2009 4:13 am

    Many thanks

  5. Ramesh Srinivasan
    said this on Thursday, April 2nd 2009 1:46 am

    @Mark: Fixed that!. Can you try downloading the file?

  6. Mark
    said this on Thursday, April 2nd 2009 12:24 am

    Trayicons.reg is saving as Trayicons.mp3!

  7. Geoff
    said this on Saturday, March 14th 2009 6:06 pm

    Thanks for great tip. Second time this has happened.
    Works fine now.
    Cheers.

  8. andrew
    said this on Thursday, February 26th 2009 5:22 pm

    super!!! finallyyyyyyyyy!!!! My problem completely solved!
    Thank’s alot!

  9. Henk
    said this on Friday, February 20th 2009 9:09 pm

    Thank you very much for this. I think it was Tuneup utilities 2008 that screwed the systray icon up. Your reg-fix perfectly restored things to normal.
    Thanks !
    Henk, Gent, Belgium

  10. Sultan
    said this on Saturday, February 14th 2009 10:28 pm

    Great! Worked perfectly!

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