[CelestialTeardrop]

All of the icons in my system tray are set to "hide when inactive" (except one which is set to "always show"). A few days ago, my taskbar rapidly switched between XP and classic themes (I only had Windows Media Player open playing an mp3), after which all of the system tray icons were shown.

I restarted, but the icons were all still visible (about half are usually hidden right after startup). I managed to resolve the issue by going into taskbar properties, customize, setting one icon to "always" hide, closing out, then opening the properties again and changing back to my original settings ("hide when inactive").

But now the problem is back, and it took several tries of the above fix to get back the normal behavior.

Does anyone know why the system tray would stop hiding the systray icons of its own accord?

Thanks.

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Sounds like a registry problem. If you don't clean your registry on a normal basis, I'd recommend downloading a program called "Crap Cleaner" which is free and has a built in registry cleaner. It's not the deepest best one out there but it's safe, fast, and effective.

Run it a few times (cause it could be a layered problem) until you get a scan with no results. That might take care of the problem.

[TotallyKonfuzed]

Sounds like a registry problem. If you don't clean your registry on a normal basis, I'd recommend downloading a program called "Crap Cleaner" which is free and has a built in registry cleaner. It's not the deepest best one out there but it's safe, fast, and effective.

Run it a few times (cause it could be a layered problem) until you get a scan with no results. That might take care of the problem.

[CelestialTeardrop]

Hi TotallyKonfuzed,

Thanks for the tip. I have CCleaner, but haven't used the registry cleaner function too much because I'm afraid of doing damage to it (the registry), since I'm not that familiar with it. But I'll give it a try.

Today the notification area arrow is behaving normally, so I don't really know what's aggravating the problem. It first appeared during a Windows update (I had previously postponed that update by shutting down without installing updates), and afterwards while Windows Media Player 10 was running.

Thanks again!

[TotallyKonfuzed]

CrapCleaner will ask to make a backup of the registry values it messes with. I've used CC for fixing my registry for a few years now and have never saved a backup because I've never had any problems with it. Of coarse I'd recommend making a backup of your first few times just incase but if anything does go wrong, u can always go back.

here's some tips


registry errors found:
0-50 = normal / pretty clean
51-500 = needs cleaning
501-5000 = probably is your first scan lol
>5000 = you got serious problems


I run it on a normal basis and usually get bout 40.

Edited by TotallyKonfuzed, 18 April 2007 - 04:17 PM.