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How To: Fix When Clock, Volume, Power or Network Icons in System Tray are Missing and Grayed Out in Windows Vista

Author: admin
Category: Vista Error Fix

Clock, Volume, Network and Power or Battery icons on Windows Vista notification area (system tray) is system icons that users can choose to display or hide. However, sometimes, any or all of these system icons can disappear, missing or hiding from notification area.

So you notice you are missing icons in the Windows Vista System Tray, like the clock or volume icons, and then you realize that you simply can’t enable them because the check boxes are grayed out. So what do you do?

system tray missing icon vista

Enable missing system tray icons by editing Windows Vista registry:

You can solve all of these problems by looking in two separate places in the  Windows Vista registry, and then deleting a bunch of keys in each location.

Open up regedit.exe through the Windows Vista start menu search or run box, and then browse down to the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

If you see any of the following key names in the right-hand pane, delete them:

  • NoTrayItemsDisplay
  • HideClock
  • HideSCAPower
  • HideSCAVolume
  • NoAutoTrayNotify
  • HideSCANetwork

registry editing vista

After deleting the values in that pane, browse to the following registry key and then repeat the process:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

You’ll have to logout from Windows Vista and then back in, and then most likely go back into taskbar properties and re-check the boxes for each.

Enable missing system tray icons in Windows Vista via Local

Group Policy Editor

  • Run GPedit.msc to start Windows Vista Local Group Policy Editor.
  • Expand the tree to go to User Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Start Menu and Taskbar.
  • Change set the state value to Disable or Not Configured for the following group policies to enable showing or displaying of the icon in the notification area.Clock: Remove Clock from the system notification area
    Volume: Remove the volume control icon
    Network: Remove the networking icon
    Power (battery) Icon: Remove the battery meter
  • Close the Local Group Policy Editor.
  • Restart Explorer, Log off and log on again, or restart computer to make the change effective.

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One Response to “How To: Fix When Clock, Volume, Power or Network Icons in System Tray are Missing and Grayed Out in Windows Vista”

  1. Almost Heaven Says:
    August 27th, 2009 at 8:52 am

    Hey! I hope you can help. I have this problem (it all started when the touch buttons for controlling the volume – primarily the mute – froze up my windows explorer).

    I followed your directions, however…

    When I go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies there is no folder for Explorer.

    When I go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies the policy tab isn’t even expandable.

    So I tried the other option. Again, however, when I tried to run GPedit.msc it told me the program wasn’t found.

    If anyone can help, it would be appreciated. :)

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