Windows 7 – Fix Invisible Tray Icons

notification-areawindows 7

The tray icons are still there, but they're just invisible. No amount of clicking will do anything to them.

enter image description here

Ending and then running explorer.exe is a quick fix, but then the icons return to their invisible state upon reboot. I've been dealing with this for a while now and it's starting to get on my nerves.

I have read many articles and tried a bunch of "solutions" such as:

  • deleting iconstreams and pasticonstreams from registry
  • installing anti-virus software
  • clearing the windows icon cache

but these have not worked.

Any help would be awesome.

Can you reproduce the issue all the time?
Yes, every time I reboot my computer they go invisible.

Are those invisible icons always the same ones?
Usually they tend to be the same ones, but sometimes Skype is hidden and sometimes it's not, for example.

Have you run sfc /scannow in command prompt as administrator?

Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations.

Best Answer

Taken from the article How to Reset the Notification Area Icons Cache is the file Reset_Notification_Area_Icons_Cache.bat.

You may download the file, but the contents of the file are also reproduced below :

:: Created by: Shawn Brink
:: http://www.sevenforums.com
:: Tutorial:  http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/13102-notification-area-icons-reset.html

@echo off
cls
set regPath=HKCU\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\TrayNotify
set regKey1=IconStreams
set regKey2=PastIconsStream
set choice=Bad-Response

echo The Explorer process must be killed to reset the Notification Area Icons Cache. 
echo.
echo Please SAVE ALL OPEN WORK before continuing
echo.
pause

echo.
taskkill /IM explorer.exe /F
echo.
FOR /F "tokens=*" %%a in ('Reg Query "%regpath%" /v %regkey1% ^| find /i "%regkey1%"') do goto iconstreams
echo Registry key "IconStreams" already deleted.
echo.

:verify-PastIconsStream
FOR /F "tokens=*" %%a in ('Reg Query "%regpath%" /v %regkey2% ^| find /i "%regkey2%"') do goto PastIconsStream
echo Registry key "PastIconsStream" already deleted.
echo.
goto confirm-restart

:iconstreams
reg delete "%regpath%" /f /v "%regkey1%"
goto verify-PastIconsStream

:PastIconsStream
reg delete "%regpath%" /f /v "%regkey2%"

:confirm-restart
echo.
echo.
echo Windows must be restarted to finish resetting the Notification Area Icons. 
echo.

:wrong 
set /p choice=Restart now? (Y/N) and press Enter:
If %choice% == y goto Yes
If %choice% == Y goto Yes
If %choice% == n goto No
If %choice% == N goto No
set choice=Bad-Response
goto wrong

:Yes
shutdown /R /f /t 00
exit

:No
echo.
echo Restart aborted. Please remember to restart the computer later.
echo.
echo You can now close this command prompt window.
explorer.exe

Detailed description for running this batch file are included in the article.

Related Question