I've just been asked by a friend to look at a 'weeny problem' on his machine.
The System Notification area is completely missing from his taskbar.
I've googled variously and all that comes up is relevant to missing icons in the area but no mention of a missing area.
The 'Hide inactive icons' box is unchecked in Taskbar settings, and I have unlocked the taskbar and moved it in various ways - bigger, smaller, sides, top, added and removed various toolbars, repositioned toolbars, restarted windows and relogged users, unshow/show clock - still nothing.
His machine is running XP pro sp2 with a few Vista imports like that snazzy icon selector thing at the top of the screen. Could this be the culprit? I thought it might be so I uninstalled it with his permission. No joy, still no System Notification Area. Even though it has been uninstalled could it have altered somthing in the registry?
I had this once on an old win9x machine and I cured it by re-running systray but my understanding is that winXP doesn't play like that.
Before doing this create a system restore point.
1. Click Start-->Run
2. Run dialog box type: gpedit.msc and click ok
3. The group policy editor will now open
4. In the left hand pane look for User Configuration and then expand the Administrative templates section
5. Now click on the Start Menu and taskbar option
6. Now scroll down the list of items in the right hand pane
7. Look for the 'hide notification area' option, right click on it and the Click properties.
8. In the properties window place a tick next to the 'not configured' option (if there is already a tick by this option and your notification tray is still not visible, then click the option marked disabled) Press OK to exit.
9. Now look for the 'remove clock from system notification area'
option and do exactly the same with that. Mark it not configured.
10. Again click OK to exit. Now exit group policy and restart your pc.
This information is provided by xphelpandsupport
