If you’re a Windows Vista user, you may have noticed that some icons in your taskbar and system tray are missing. This is because Microsoft has removed the icons in order to improve the performance of the operating system. If you’re not sure why Microsoft has removed the icons, you can check out this article for more information. In general, Microsoft is removing icons in order to improve the performance of Windows Vista and make it more efficient. However, there are a few exceptions where Microsoft may still need to removeicons in order to improve performance. For example, if you have an AMD Radeon graphics card and your taskbar or system tray shows “No Icon” or “Unknown Device”, then your graphics card might be causing Windows Vista to experience poor performance. In this case, Microsoft might need to remove the icon from your taskbar or system tray in order to fix the issue.
The problem exists because system policies were set that probably shouldn’t be, but either way your icons are missing:
Normally you can re-enable the items by right-clicking on the Taskbar, choosing properties and going to the Notification Area tab:
But they are grayed out… what’s up with that?
Note: I’m assuming you already did the normal Windows fix-it technique of rebooting, and the problem still exists.
Fix for Notification Icons are Missing and Checkboxes are Grayed Out
You can solve all of these problems by looking in two separate places in the registry, and then deleting a bunch of keys in each location. We’ll detail all of the keys here, but you can skip down a bit for a downloadable registry hack file.
Open up regedit.exe through the start menu search or run box, and then browse down to the following key:
If you see any of the following key names in the right-hand pane, delete them:
NoTrayItemsDisplay HideClock HideSCAPower HideSCAVolume NoAutoTrayNotify HideSCANetwork
After deleting the values in that pane, browse to the following key and then repeat the process:
You’ll have to logout and then back in, and then most likely go back into taskbar properties and re-check the boxes for each.
Download Registry Hack
Just download, extract, and double-click on RestoreMyTrayIconsPlease.reg to enter the information into the registry.
Download RestoreMyTrayIconsPlease Registry Hack
What if the Volume Icon Still Doesn’t Work?
Over the last year, many people have reported a related problem to me: They just have no volume icon… and also no sound.
If you encounter this problem, you should immediately open Device Manager and make sure that there are no exclamation points next to your sound card, because the problem is likely that your sound card driver isn’t working.
If there are exclamation points, or the sound card is missing and there are a bunch of “Unknown devices”, you usually need to reload the sound card driver from the manufacturer, but sometimes you can right-click on the device and choose to “Update Driver”.
Note: I’ve also run into this issue with Toshiba and Acer laptops, the solution for those usually being a BIOS update.
If you still have problems, head over to our forum and ask your question over there.
Important Note: Numerous people have reported to me that this problem happens much less after installing Service Pack 1, so you should probably make sure you are all patched up as well.
