Rebooting bizarre-ness

[pjfarr]

Here's a weird one...

Lately when I reboot my machine, the volume icon is missing from the system tray and my antivirus icon loads in disable mode. In the Sound And Audio Device Settings dialog, the "Show volume icon in the taskbar" box is checked and an unchecking/applying/re-checking/re-appyling sequence will make the icon appear (the volume/sound doesn't seem effected adversely by any of this). For the antivirus, right-clicking the icon shows "enabled" on the popup menu, even though the icon is in disabled mode. The same unchecking/applying/re-checking/re-appyling sequence fixes this too.

The kicker is, when I logoff then back on, all icons are present and activated.

So, rebooting screws up the systemtray, loging off/on loads it correctly...

Thanks...

 

[Fragrant Coit]

If it's XP, you could try System Restore & roll it back to a time before it was playing up.

Start / Programs / Accessories / System Tools / System Restore


Running a CHKDSK wouldn't hurt either.

My Computer, Right Click on C:, Properties, Tools / Error checking. Tick the 2 boxes and reboot. That will find & fix any File errors.

 

[pjfarr]

I did do a system restore and when the system booted up at the end of the restore procedure, all icons were present and functioning and I thought all was well. The next time I rebooted, though, same thing.

I ran a full series of hardware diagnostics (the Dell XPS-600 has a Utilities Partition I can boot into) and it tests everything: CPU, M/B, RAM, Periphrials, Video/Audio cards, even the system fans. All passed. So I'm convinced it's a software setting somewhere that got fudged.

What would link/effect both the volume control and antivirus....I think the answer is there somewhere.

BTW, I thought CHKDSK worked as well, since the system loaded everything correctly after the scan (in DOS mode)...but once again, on reboot, no such luck.

After 3 days of troubleshooting and online research I discovered there were a lot of people having this same issue, but there didn't seem to be any answers - just the same series of advice/suggestions that didn't work.

Finally, I found this page, which listed a few solutions. I tried the one dubbed The Ostuni Workaround and it worked. Everything's back to normal.

My only question now is how it got screwed up in the first place...