"Hide inactive icons" is greyed out in Taskbar Properties
Published: April 26, 2005Updated : July 27, 2005
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Symptoms
When you right-click the Taskbar and choose Properties, the option Hide inactive icons and the corresponding Customize button may be greyed out. More information on the Hide inactive icons feature can be found here: Description of Notification Area Settings
Cause
This happens if any of these two Policy settings are enabled for the Taskbar.
- NoAutoTrayNotify
- NoTrayItemsDisplay
Resolution
-
Click Start, Run and type REGEDIT and press Enter
Navigate to the following keys:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Policies\ Explorer
and
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Policies\ Explorer
In the right-pane:
Delete the value NoAutoTrayNotify
Delete the value NoTrayItemsDisplay
-
Close Registry Editor, logoff and re-login for the changes to take effect
In Windows XP Professional, you can also accomplish the above using Group Policy Editor.
Click Start, Run and type GPEDIT.MSC
Navigate to this path:
=> User Configuration
==> Administrative Templates
===> Start Menu and Taskbar
Set Turn off notification area cleanup to Not Configured
Set Hide the notification area to Not Configured
More Information
Turn off notification area cleanup corresponds to NoAutoTrayNotify registry value. Hide the notification area corresponds to NoTrayItemsDisplay value.