Missing Icon in Notification Area

[Painter7]

A glitch has arisen during boot. Running XP Pro 3, fully patched, the boot process has slowed considerably as if Windows is looking for something missing or some file it needs is damaged. The manifestation of the problem is in the Icon Notification area e.g. containing the clock. Hide inactive icons is not on. Nonetheless several Icons do not now appear. E.g. that for Eset Nod32, for Comodo, for True Crypt etc. Oddly some do appear, as they should, e.g. Spyware Doctor, the network icons, Sandboxie, an HP Printer Icon and EPU-6 Engine. All of the actual programs cited from the antivirus & firewall to the Engine seem to have started ok during boot as evidenced by using task manager and identifying the related processes as being ok and running. The issue is that they do not show in the Icon Notification area. Another anomaly: I looked to ensure that I had not turned on Hide Inactive Icons on the Task Bar and Start Menu Screen. I clicked it out of interest and while scrolling the Customize Screen the icons associated with various programs are wrong.
Thus – Where might I look to identify the problem
Painter7 is offline Reply With Quote

 

[tonylukac]

A glitch has arisen during boot. Running XP Pro 3, fully patched, the boot process has slowed considerably as if Windows is looking for something missing or some file it needs is damaged. The manifestation of the problem is in the Icon Notification area e.g. containing the clock. Hide inactive icons is not on. Nonetheless several Icons do not now appear. E.g. that for Eset Nod32, for Comodo, for True Crypt etc. Oddly some do appear, as they should, e.g. Spyware Doctor, the network icons, Sandboxie, an HP Printer Icon and EPU-6 Engine. All of the actual programs cited from the antivirus & firewall to the Engine seem to have started ok during boot as evidenced by using task manager and identifying the related processes as being ok and running. The issue is that they do not show in the Icon Notification area. Another anomaly: I looked to ensure that I had not turned on Hide Inactive Icons on the Task Bar and Start Menu Screen. I clicked it out of interest and while scrolling the Customize Screen the icons associated with various programs are wrong.
Thus – Where might I look to identify the problem
Painter7 is offline Reply With Quote

I have a similiar problem with my old Dell XP rig. Some service may now be slower (or even perhaps faster) to start and this corrupts the notification area icons. They only way I can get all icons EVERY TIME is to set a password for my user name in control panel and wait a few minutes before typing it in upon startup. Sometimes playing with the Services tab in Start->Run->Msconfig is an alternative, but I couldn't tell you which services are optional.

 

[Painter7]

Possible Services Problem

I agree, this could well be a services problem. I have reviewed the non microsoft ones. Maybe I will for the Microsoft ones as well.
btw there is a better tool than msconfig: it is "autoruns". It is also from Microsoft and is free.

 

[LookinAround]

Hi tonylukac and Painter 7

A few comments for both of you
1) Autoruns is a great tool. But suggest it's best used for program startups
2) Take a look at Serviwin for Services and Drivers.
3) Also! Is useful to use serviwin to save a report about all your current services/settings before you start tweaking them
4) Black Viper is a good resource for checking your services/settings
5) Once you believe all the bugs are worked out in your boot process (i.e. it's just slow but otherwise booting correctly), take a look at running Bootvis to optimize the boot process for XP

And to painter7
You might also try in Explorer, click Tools->Folder Options and uncheck "Automatically search for network folders"

 

[tonylukac]

The only reason I told you to use msconfig for altering services is that one time when I used device manager to disable services my system became unbootable until I did last known good configuration boot. You can disable ALL services in msconfig and your system will still safely boot.

 

[kimsland]

Please confirm you have done >> THIS

If so then try this reg file, that has fixed Taskbar issues for me many times on many computers: http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/regs_edits/restoretaskbar.reg
(You may need to right click the save as, to download it
Then merge the registry file (yes to continue)
Then restart

 

[dhanushka83]

Did u see the ip address. is ip shown as 0.0.0.0, it happens to me..It's problem of virus, It stopped several services like workstation, netlogon..ect...It has a solution form MS edit registry and i would be re create all services, Another hard solution is repair OS