Toolbar Icons missing

rolleyes
In the past week for no reason I can fathom, my toolbar icons ( safely remove software & M.S Essentials ) have disappeared from my tray.
I like to see that MS is doing its job & is 'on' & of course it is necessary to have the safe to remove software icon there too as I use USB internet connection quite often. They were there one evening and gone next morning when laptop turned on, I managed to recover them ( after trying several ways that didn't work- as in advice I found in Google and on the M.S website.
I have looked here too but can't find a thread with any info for me.
I finally did a 'System restore' which put them back, but next day gone again !
The only way I keep them on there now is not turn of laptop at all. other than to put into 'standby' mode.
In this tray I have my anti virus, MS security essentials, Malware bytes, Picasa, Onenote, & the safely remove icons. They have been there for long time, I can handle some of them not showing, but it is a darn nuisance with the MS & hardware ones disappearing.
I can't think of anything that has been done to cause this. and it seems after doing a search for a solution no one really knows why it happens.
I have had to do 2 system restores to get them back. Which is I don't think is very good way to do it, Is it ?
I have a locked toolbar, then unlocked it, and have checked out in the task bar properties to make sure these are in the list & ticked. (if thats what I'm suppose to do, I don't know ! )
The only info I found is that - TCP/IP stack is corrupted and needs resetting.
Yikes & Oh gee how do I ifx this, if it is?
I am using -
IBM Thinkpad. Windows XP. 1GB Ram. Service pack 3.

Do hope someone can help TIA.

 

missbop -

Have you tried creating another user account in Windows yet? I would do this under Control Panel/User Accounts.

Create that new account, make it be an administrator account, and then setup your prefs and try restarting and logging back in again with that same new account and see if everything stays the same.

As for the TCP/IP stack repair, do this:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/299357

 

From what I can gather, this disappearing act is (was) a common problem with XP...if the logoff/logon doesn't work, you might check out this Tech-Pro article: pretty informative, and the steps look easy...

 

regarding the icons disappearing...

There's a value in the registry called PastIconsStream that can get huge over time. It is thought that the size of this value---it's a string---combined with a timing problem when booting, causes the icons not to be loaded, or they are only partially loaded. Some have said that letting the PC sit for a minute after hard drive activity stops after logging in that eventually the icons will load. Others say that logging out (not off) and back in again fixes it. Try those ideas first if you want.

My icons were getting a little wonky a while back and I deleted PastIconsStreams and one called IconStreams and everything's been fine since. Here's how to do it:

In Regedit navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\TrayNotify

If you see in the right pane the two values mentioned above, then right-click on TrayNotify and choose Export. Save the file as Icons.reg on your desktop. This will be your backup if something gets boogered.

Now in the right pane right-click in turn and delete PastIconsStreams and IconStreams.

Close Regedit, reboot and see if the Systray icons are back. If they haven't loaded by the time the hard drive has stopped after logging in, then this tweak may not have worked for your PC. Try logging out and back in again and see if that changes anything. If still no change, then double-click the icons.reg file on your desktop, say yes to the merge question and you should get a "success" message. Reboot and you'll be back to where you began. You can delete icons.reg on your desktop at this point.

This solution, which worked for me as mentioned, makes more sense to me than disabling/enabling various Services as can be seen in other solutions on the 'net. PastIconsStreams was absolutely huge on my laptop (1GB ram, XP SP3), so huge that I never did get to the end of the string value when I was first exploring the problem. It appears that it's an accumulative string, growing longer all the time. Eventually it becomes so big that the timing problem mentioned above rears its ugly head.

It has been several months since I deleted the above values from my registry. No problems since, the systray icons have been stable and the two values have not returned. I can't swear that it will work for you, too, but there's no harm in trying if you make the backup first.

 

Yes thanks for that. Will have more of a read later. In all my searching didn't come upon this. Cheers

 

This certainly makes more sense to me to try with this one first.
Have searched endlessly and haven't seen these fixes mentioned till now so hope it works. I am busy for few days, but will get back & let you all know what worked, as have had to just do another system restore as some wee blighter turned this off rolleyes

Why OH Why Why Why do we love cpomputers ? !! Ha Ha .