BleepingComputer.com: Missing Icons in Taskbar!

Hi everyone,

Today when I started up my computer, I noticed a bunch of icons were missing from my taskbar on the bottom right of my screen (next to the clock) for some reason. No it's NOT hidden my inactive icons thing, as there is no "<" arrow to click to show any hidden icons at all.

I used msconfig to change from selective to default (load all) startup, but some icons, such as avast!, my finger print reader, ad-aware, my realtek audio, and some other icons still don't show.

I've tried solutions such as changing the theme of Vista, disabling some Plug and Play network service, checking and unchecking the inactive icons option, even restarting multiple times, and http://www.colincochrane.com/post/2007/10/...-Icons-Fix.aspx , but they all don't work.

The only change i can think of that I did to my system was running iolo System Mechanic yesterday. Before I did that, I created a restore point, so I went into system restore to see if I could restore my system to a previous state, and guess what? System Mechanic wiped all my restore points! I'm going to go complain to them, but in the meantime, does anyone have any solutions to my problem?

Oh yeah, and in System Mechanic, the "revert changes made by system mechanic" list shows nothing...so I can't revert what the stupid program did. Have also tried uninstalling the program, to no avail.

Thanks a lot!

First, set MSCONFIG to start the system normally. It's because of problems like this that MSCONFIG should only be used to troubleshoot problems - then it should be reset to default. To remove startup items, use this free tool from Microsoft: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysintern...s/Autoruns.mspx

To fix them all individually, it's going to require that you locate the appropriate executable file(s) that are required to run those items. This is (IMO) actually more work than just reinstalling those applications to fix the missing stuff.

Have set msconfig to load as "normal startup", however some icons still seem to be missing. Should I just reinstall whatever is missing?


And could this have been caused by System Mechanic, or just coicidence?

If the icons are missing, what happens when you launch the program through the Start Menu? If the icons come back, then it's likely that they're not loading at startup (let us know if this is the case, and we'll see what we can do to get them starting). If they don't come back, then it's likely that there's a corruption of the program and a reinstall would be indicated at that point.

Hey,
Sorry for the late reply...

Some programs, like my finger print reader, Realtek HD audio manager, and Ad-aware icons don't appear.

With Ad-Aware, even starting up the program does not show the tray icon, despite the fact that it reports Ad-Watch as "on".

Other software like fingerprint reader, or Realtek HD audio manager I don't know how to startup at all, as it is not in the start menu startup. Should I just do a re-install of them?

Thanks.

Although this is for XP, I believe it also applies to your situation:
http://winhlp.com/node/16

Some of the methods I don't get, some of them didn't really help.

Should I try re-installing any missing programs I notice, and see if the problem goes away?

Usually the easiest cure for missing stuff is to uninstall, and then reinstall the application/driver in order to regain the features that you need. But this depends on the settings in System Mechanic also. The other possibility is a malware infection - but I wouldn't expect that to manifest in the drivers that you've mentioned.

Hardware devices (fingerprint device and sound/RealTek device) load differently than applications (AdAware) - so there locations are different in Autoruns. That being said, there's not an easy way to load a hardware device from within Windows.

Download new drivers for the Fingerprint Reader and the RealTek Audio device. Download a new copy of AdAware.
Then uninstall the programs from Control Panel...Programs and Features
Then install the freshly downloaded stuff.