Missing System Icons in Windows Vista
This happened to me twice when I was using Windows XP: I just could not enable the Volume icon for at my notification area. Tried as much as I could, there is no way I could make it appear until I found a super long and detailed entry dedicated to fixing this weird error.
A similar problem occurred to me on Windows Vista today: I just can’t make my Network icon show up in the notification area using the usual method:
- Task bar properties
- Notification Area
- Select which system icons to always show
Appears that there is a more advanced fix for it involving the registry and it worked! From Samuel’s blog:
- Run “regedit” (Registry Editor)
- Find “iconstreams”
- Delete all registry keys with names “IconStreams” and “PastIconStreams” until “iconstreams” can no longer be found in the registry
- Restart Windows Vista
- Enable the missing icon using the usual method
Hey thanks for the help!!! It fixed my issue with my missing volume icon on my vista system tray.
Nor
July 21, Saturday at 4:08 pm
Sweet, Very nice fix thanks =o)
Para
July 22, Sunday at 1:50 am
Thanks for the help, I also fixed my issue with my missing network icon.
note: there is no need to reboot in my case, will save you some time
Viktor
July 28, Saturday at 4:58 pm
[...] Missing System Icons in Windows Vista Contains a fix to an annoying bug, i.e. missing system tray icons, found in Windows Vista. [...]
Top Posts for Month of July « Thoughts of a Diurnal
July 31, Tuesday at 9:34 am
Thank you so much for the help….it fixed mine once I deleted “iconstreams” and “pasticonstreams” and then rebooted. Once it booted up, the volume and network icons reappeared without me having to go back into properties and re-selecting them. Thanks again!
Fran
August 12, Sunday at 3:55 am
very nice advice! i ran a registry cleaner and it must have thought it was an unneeded start up program. all fixed now.
shane
August 20, Monday at 10:45 am
I am having a problem still with my Screen Brightness icon is still missing. Any ideas how to get this back? I don’t even know where you would turn that icon on! But it does not show up in my mobility center either. thoughts? ideas?
ry
October 6, Saturday at 1:36 am
Thanks man! It solved my volume missing problem! Congratulations
Daniels
October 27, Saturday at 9:43 pm
GRAZZZZZZZZIE!!!
Diego
November 17, Saturday at 6:38 pm
Yes, this worked quite fine. Thank you!!
asv420
November 22, Thursday at 7:26 am
Thanks man, this really worked well! Much appreciated!
Best.
lucky-g
December 14, Friday at 8:41 pm
I tried following the suggested solution but it didn’t work. I tried activating the sound from the properties but the checkbox is still coming greyed out. Please Help…..
anmol
January 5, Saturday at 2:58 pm
My volume icon has dissappeared several times and each time I have run regedit and deleted iconstreams and pasticonstreams. Is there any way to stop this happening over and over?
thanka
Linzi
linzi
January 5, Saturday at 9:30 pm
anmol: Probably you haven’t remove all instances of registry keys with names “IconStreams” and “PastIconStreams”. Find and delete them until you can’t find anymore of them.
linzi: From experience, this only happens when there is a incomplete shut down. Probably you can investigate somewhere along this direction.
nzj
January 7, Monday at 3:46 pm
Thanks a bunch!! Why one earth does this problem occur in the first place though?
Jolene
January 19, Saturday at 11:14 pm
Excellent. This method worked like a charm. Many thanks!
Mike
February 4, Monday at 1:47 pm
Thanks for posting this it was helpful. I am able to select all the icons execpt the power one for some reason now?
Nns
February 15, Friday at 10:32 pm
I have missing icons in my control panel using Vista Premium Home Edition 64-bit? Is this the same issue. Someone told me that Microsoft has two hot fixes but neither worked?
Kevin
March 10, Monday at 9:39 am
Nice fix….. Thank’s
Frank
March 10, Monday at 8:07 pm
Great help, it works!!… thanks.
Tiobolo
March 19, Wednesday at 11:25 pm
THANK YOU!! my battery meter, network icon and sound icon were all missing after installing Vista SP1 and the check boxes were grayed out so I couldn’t re-enable them manually. bleh.
turbogirl
March 21, Friday at 4:07 am
Hi, Thanks your tip worked..
Cheers
dogo
March 25, Tuesday at 7:14 am
Vista Business had icons – after SP1 they went away and Properties showed them as greyed out. This restored them to be selected in properties – thanks a lot for your insights.
Gary Bauer
March 30, Sunday at 11:42 pm
This worked perfectly. Thanks a Bunch!
Oliveoyl
April 1, Tuesday at 7:38 am
this can be accomplished just by logging out and logging back in. according to linzi, this does not permanently solve the problem. anyone have a more permanent fix? why isn’t M$OFT doing anything about this?
veritas
April 6, Sunday at 2:53 am
pefect!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
pavan
April 11, Friday at 1:30 am
[...] hat das so erstmal nichts gebracht. Daher habe ich noch etwas weiter das Netz durchsucht und dabei diesen Beitrag entdeckt. Das war auch meine Überlegung, ob die anderen einfach mal löschen sollte. Gesagt – [...]
5-Finger-Blog von Hollii » Systemtray Symbole
April 13, Sunday at 3:21 pm
thanks for the help
Dan
May 3, Saturday at 1:44 am
PERFECT! worked like a charm!!
ben
May 19, Monday at 8:01 pm
Muchas gracias solucione el problema, pero no sabia que lo habia adquirido cuando instale el sp1, lo unico que no pude recobrar es el audio que tenia la barra deslizable de mi note pavillon
Julio
June 7, Saturday at 8:21 pm
A permanent solution will be nice.
Michael
June 9, Monday at 1:27 pm
Awesome, thanks worked a treat. Didn’t even need to restart, just went into the properties and could select them again.
Scotto
June 16, Monday at 4:13 am
[...] This is something that troubled me in XP still occurs occasionally in Vista. Randomly, various system icons won’t load in the system tray. When you try to enable them in the taskbar properties the checkbox is disabled. After a bit of Googling I found this fix: [...]
Martin’s Blog » Blog Archive » Missing system icons in Vista
July 11, Friday at 8:38 pm
exacty what i needed! thanks a lot! =)
Danv
July 18, Friday at 2:38 pm
Yea it worked great! YOU ARE A LIFE SAVER! Thankx a bunch!
Dwayne
July 21, Monday at 2:02 pm
This fixed my network icon, but my volume and power icons are still missing….
nate
August 17, Sunday at 5:16 am
Thanks this worked for me.
Ronkcub
August 19, Tuesday at 3:13 pm
Just kill explorer and start it again instead of rebooting
kipusoep
September 9, Tuesday at 2:34 am
Thanks a lot :3
Restarting explorer only worked perfectly too
Thea
September 14, Sunday at 12:07 am
It worked for the network and volume icons but not for the battery meter.
Fred
September 22, Monday at 3:31 am
Great!!!!!! thanks.
Edu
September 29, Monday at 9:02 pm
Thanks for the post. This is the 2nd time I have had to do this. The problem occurs following the reboot required by some Vista updates.
Rob Kraft
October 19, Sunday at 6:10 am
thank THE LORD! this was pissing me off beyond belief. fucking vista.
User201
October 24, Friday at 1:26 am
No need for a restart. Open up the task manager, kill “explorer.exe” and then restart it. File->New Task->”explorer.exe” – DONE
Brian
October 28, Tuesday at 1:46 pm
Thanks so much for your Excellent Help !!!
tonybum
April 8, Wednesday at 10:48 pm
Thank you so much! I tried everything and almost gave up, but it was bothering me so badly, that I looked it up on the Internet and found this…it helped a tons…it even allowed me to click the “Network” button also, under the “Notication Area”…Thanks again! =)
Ty
November 17, Monday at 2:14 am
Thanks SOO Much!! Such a great help!
Rina
November 18, Tuesday at 6:49 am
my battery is still missing after trying all the mentioned methods,if any one can help i would be eternaly grateful as this is a major headache
mazlad
November 21, Friday at 3:22 pm
gracias man! ya me estaba empezando a preocupar jeje..
WiLL
November 24, Monday at 3:11 am
thank you so much i was starting to get worried that i would have to live without a power icon
golferguy92
November 30, Sunday at 1:37 am
Hey thanks for the fix. God I hate vista. I’d like to know what “iconstream” is or does though. Anyone know why it would cause such annoying problems? I’m always interested in a new tidbit of information
AndiG
December 5, Friday at 9:35 pm
I tried deleting this icon that says (Default) but it would let me.the message I got was “unable to delete all specified values”
Becky
December 15, Monday at 11:47 am
Great fix! As usual, more (*Y(*^(^($#%@#$ from MS that we have to find a fix for.
It seems that they would start to clean their own house. As a developer it’s a pain to have to deal with stuff that MS should deal with themselves prior to releasing a product.
– F..ing pissed at ms!
JimBme
December 18, Thursday at 8:08 am
Thanks………….that was highly appreciable
Sonil
December 19, Friday at 4:35 am
It’s people like you that make my day! Thank you so much for this great fix. I have added this to my favorites because the problem will probably happen again. Can you hear my happy shout from Oregon?
babyfrogtoes
December 28, Sunday at 2:23 pm
thx. Great fix. not sure how you figure that out.
jonaslan
January 4, Sunday at 12:51 am
Great Update your website as the first website in google.:)
Vista
January 6, Tuesday at 12:20 am
Bloody good job there. Was pissing me off!!!!!! And this worked a treat :O)
I HATE VISTA.
Tarka
January 6, Tuesday at 1:30 am
[...] [...]
Netzwerkikon in der Taskleiste verschwunden | hilpers
January 18, Sunday at 1:41 am
[...] References: http://antemeridiem.wordpress.com/2007/07/13/missing-system-icons-in-windows-vista/ [...]
[Tutorial] How to fix missing icon at taskbar « eXPeri3nc3’s Corner
January 30, Friday at 4:00 am
thanks!
Great fix!
luli
February 1, Sunday at 6:05 am
Exacty what i needed! thanks a lot! =)
Thank you very much
Chris777
February 3, Tuesday at 5:35 am
Thanks you saved my day, these missing icons i realy annoying
Yogi
February 8, Sunday at 9:01 pm
why are WE all working on our computers all the time FIXING things. shouldint bill gates pay for this he got out money and didint tell me or you about all the wasted time we will wast fixing vista if he did would you have got it anyway anyone know his email or his wifes i want to send him a email with what i think about his work we should all be doing this what do you all think??????
trigger
February 11, Wednesday at 1:27 pm
the usual response…. if you don’t want to waste you life always fixing the computer…. buy a Macintosh!
Anon
March 20, Friday at 4:10 pm
Thanks, this is what i needed! Good fix using pauls solution
coda
February 17, Tuesday at 6:54 am
Thanks for the tip worked a charm.
Katkins
February 26, Thursday at 5:25 pm
Oh my god! Thank you sooooo much for your help. I don’t have to Master Reset my window Vista!!!! Thank for a million! You are my hero!!!
Suki
March 12, Thursday at 12:07 pm
I’ve installed Windows Vista Ultimate on my HP nx7300 laptop.Before I had XP Professional.Now I have this problem : volume icon in the taskbar doesn’t respond wyhen I click on it.I have reinstalled Vista Ultimate,but another one,different .ISO size,genuine,no crack.First times,like in the previous Vista,worked…after few times clicking on it to adjust the volume : no response . Volume mixer and sound volume freezed,no response cliking on them.Manually,I can adjust the volume,mute on,mute off.I’ve tried everything,from desinstallig the driver,reinstaling,using other drivers to modifying different settings.Accesing SoundMax from Control Panel works,settings are working,only Sound volume and mixer by clicking on them do not work.The only thing I didn’t tried is modifying something in the registry,because I don’t know.From all I tried ,is the only solution I can imagine for fixing. Anyone that can help,I will appreciate a lot,not only me,but others too that have the same prolem and can’t find an answer. Thank’s
nayrpyc
March 12, Thursday at 9:38 pm
Thanks, worked fine.. Thanks2
Andy Friedl
March 21, Saturday at 9:19 am
great tips !!!
i did and worked very well!
thank u
cumps!
http://betterworldforus.wordpress.com
betterworldforus
April 2, Thursday at 2:21 pm
Thanks sooooo much !!!
tonybum
April 8, Wednesday at 10:50 pm
It’s amazing!….
Added one more credit feather for me.
Thanking you again..
Shamseer
May 5, Tuesday at 8:46 pm