System Tray Icons vanish!

manokent63

OSNN Junior Addict
Joined
12 Apr 2004
Messages
22
Would appear that explorer.exe crashed although got none of the usual XP warning messages popped up. Following the crash, I noticed that the majority of the system tray icons had vanished, although the applications that were missing were still running according to task manager.

Does anyone know how to access the running applications such as download managers etc. If I open the application as normal from proggy files then they do not show the current operation which is running.

Does anyone know a fix to get these icons back without having to shut down the PC and re-boot or to access the applications that are still running? I am currently downloading a big pdf file and if I close windows I will lose it and have to start all over again. I have tried some programmes such as traymultiplexer etc but these proggy's require a re-boot.

TIA
 
If explorer crashed and didn't come back (you can tell by the fact that you don't have a taskbar or desktop icons anymore), you can restart explorer by bringing up Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+del), File -> select "New Task (run...)" and then type in "explorer.exe".

If this isn't the case, then you'll have to reboot like lechtard said, or you can use task manager to kill all those apps one-by-one and then you should be able to restart them.
 
here download this. since i installed it no more dead explorers. it works wonders.
 
Lazy programmers...

The reason for this is lazy programmers.

Basically when explorer restarts it informs applications that it has done so, and it is the applications duty to reload its notification icon. This should be standard practise, but many programs do not implement it.

More (technical, mind you) information can be found at the below link under the subsection "Taskbar Creation Notification"

MSDN - The Taskbar
 
yeah i use traysaver. works good. Another thing you can do (short of rebooting) is relog on.
 
Like Leedogg said, I use the logoff, re-login method to get my tray icons back if Explorer locks up.
I try not to shutdown/reboot unless it's absolutely required. Standby/hibernate is the way to go :)
 
Originally posted by NetRyder
Like Leedogg said, I use the logoff, re-login method to get my tray icons back if Explorer locks up.
I try not to shutdown/reboot unless it's absolutely required. Standby/hibernate is the way to go :)

I find that if I log out and log in it slows my pc down a-lot .. I mean so bad that I can't run anything .. I don't have fast user sswitch enabled either .. So I just reboot ..
 
did you allow windowze to set hid inactive icons when they seem not needed in the notification area?
 

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