Sound or volume tray icon missing in Windows Vista?

Posted by Aseem on Monday, November 24th 2008

24
Nov

Is your sound icon suddenly missing from your Windows Vista system tray!? It was there just a little while ago, but now it’s gone! For some strange reason, many Vista users have to deal with missing volume and network icons on a regular basis!

Even after I upgraded to Windows Vista SP1, my volume icon and network connections icon will just disappear from the system tray. The funny thing is that if you go to the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties dialog and click on the Notification Area tab, the volume, network, and power icons are all grayed out!

So basically all of my icons in the notification area are missing! Great! So how can you get your volume and network icons back into the system tray? Unfortunately, if the options to check them are grayed out like above in the Notification Area tab, then you have to hack the registry. First, make sure to backup the registry in case something goes wrong.

Now open the registry editor by going to Start and typing in regedit into the Instant Search box. Go to the Edit menu and click on Find. Search for “IconStreams” and click OK.

After a few moments, you’ll see the following key with two entries on the right hand side: IconStreams and PastIconStream. You want to right-click on both of those and delete them.

In case you can’t find those two keys for some reason, the full registry path to IconStreams is:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\TrayNotify

Once you delete those two keys from the registry, restart your computer. Usually, all your icons will come back automatically, but if they don’t, just go to the Notification Area tab under Start Menu properties and check off the icons you want to have appear again.

Unfortunately, this problem of the missing icons in Vista happens to me over and over, even after deleting the registry keys. I’m not really sure of any other way to permanently fix the problem, so if you know of another method, please post a comment and enlighten us all! Enjoy!

Share This Article
Save this page	Stir it up on Mixx
Add to Reddit	Stumble this page	Submit to Digg

36 Comments Already

XSilvenX Said,

December 17th, 2008 @7:23 pm

Didn’t work for me…might work for some of you but it’s surely not 100%

chrissyadams Said,

December 18th, 2008 @10:47 pm

i can’t find my volume icon. i did a update for windows and when i restarted my computer the icon was gone. i followed your instructions concerning the IconStream and PastIconStream but when i went into the registry the default setting was the only one there so what do i do next?

Owen Said,

December 20th, 2008 @3:44 am

You could try just restarting the system without editing the registry. Even logging off and logging back on would work.

IkeySnigglefritz Said,

January 2nd, 2009 @12:06 am

I fixed mine without a regedit by doing this…
Navigate to Control Panel / Sound
Select appropriate speaker/headphone and choose Properties
Advanced tab – deselect “Allow applications to take exclusive control of this device”

Tony Said,

January 9th, 2009 @8:36 pm

Works a treat for me.

Instead of restarting after making the reg fix, just end the process explorer.exe within Task Manager under the Processes tab, then under the Applications tab, create a new task, explorer.exe. Saves a few minutes and the hassle of restarting

Nina Said,

January 13th, 2009 @10:12 pm

You do not even need to restart the whole computer or log off and on.
Simply open the task-manager, terminate the process “explorer.exe” and then restart “explorer.exe”. This works, because the tray-problem is an explorer issue.

Jenny Said,

February 26th, 2009 @4:13 am

Nina’s suggestion totally works! First I was pretty freaked out when everything except the task manager was wiped out after I ended explorer.exe, but all you have to do when this happens is to go to File in the task manager window, select New Task, and then type in “explorer.exe”, click OK, and everything will go back to normal, including the volume icon.

Faffee Said,

March 2nd, 2009 @10:52 pm

Nina/Jenny-
Ur absolutely correct! Worked like a charm…

tsealy Said,

April 2nd, 2009 @9:00 pm

This works great for a good long time and it’s easy to redo when necessary. Thanks to the author of this help!

Shell Said,

May 9th, 2009 @1:23 am

Worked great along with ending explorer.exe process and starting a new task. Thank you!

Elly Said,

May 9th, 2009 @12:41 pm

THANK YOU SO MUCH! After experiencing a very scary crash (blue screen and all) after attempting a regedit following the method given on several forums to the letter, I’m very relieved the real solution is so simple!

Annunaak Said,

May 16th, 2009 @2:57 pm

A simple reboot worked for me too…

Tomasz Said,

July 29th, 2009 @6:59 pm

MIcrosoft issued automated fix for the missing system icons in the taskbar: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/945011 .

Eric L. Griffin Said,

August 1st, 2009 @2:12 pm

Thnx for my icon & the reboot workaround.

sandy_dan22 Said,

August 10th, 2009 @6:30 am

Thanks I manage to resolve the missing sound icon issue! God Bless! keep it up

liz Said,

November 15th, 2009 @11:30 am

Thank-you so much. It worked like a charm Got my volume icon back!

andiga Said,

December 17th, 2009 @3:23 am

Wahhhh super Nina and Jenny. Works so smooth, got my sound icon back in Vista! Tks a million, Gabriel!

ashruii Said,

January 9th, 2010 @5:21 pm

If you don’t want to restart your computer after deleting the icon streams just open task manager (ctrl+shift+esc), go to processes and end explorer. Then just run a new task, type in ‘explorer.exe’ and you should have your missing icons back! (:

paul Said,

January 17th, 2010 @5:55 pm

excellent help. it worked to perfection and I got my sound icon back. brilliant

torrobinson Said,

January 18th, 2010 @10:35 am

IkeySnigglefritz’s suggestion worked perfectly, and I didn’t have to mess with the registry.

Thanks!

adalberto Said,

January 22nd, 2010 @8:32 pm

thank you so much, it helped me get my volume icon back!!

Spironic Said,

January 26th, 2010 @7:05 pm

I tried this on XP and it also works! Thank you so much, I was looking for the appropriate registry entry EVERYWHERE!

Note, though, that the registry path on XP is a bit different. It’s:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\TrayNotify

Then just delete IconStreams and PastIconStream just like on vista, then restart (or kill explorer.exe and run it again).

Pegsbutterball Said,

January 29th, 2010 @10:13 pm

Thank you, thank you thank you! It was making me crazy!

oldeyes Said,

February 20th, 2010 @10:44 pm

task manager works great,just right click on your task bar, select task manager then proceed as Nina has suggested.you may then retype exp ex back in the same way it was in before the delete and all is well. Great suggestion Nina thank you

pipsqueak Said,

February 21st, 2010 @4:40 pm

this has happened to me several times – i just take the battery out & put it back in several minutes later, hey presto, volume icon back again! easy!

remibourgarel Said,

March 1st, 2010 @6:01 am

it worked thx ! Instead of rebooting your computer you can reboot only the explorer.exe process :

ctrl alt supp -> process ‘explorer.exe’ -> right click -> end process -> file -> new task -> ‘explorer’ -> OK

ClaireD13 Said,

March 13th, 2010 @4:55 pm

Your awesome! Thank you- I got my sound icon back!

VaDonna Said,

March 20th, 2010 @8:10 pm

Thank You!!!! Oh my goodness… I stressed for two days trying to figure out how to restore my Icons. This was awesome help. You all are great!

sana Said,

March 22nd, 2010 @10:34 am

the explorer thing was very helpful…thank you so much for posting it…:)

ar.m Said,

March 22nd, 2010 @10:57 pm

sweet! Got my volume icon back in the system tray!

Sango Said,

March 25th, 2010 @3:53 pm

Thanks so much everyone! I freaked out when my sound icon vanished, but the explorer.exe thing did the trick.

olenmcguire Said,

March 29th, 2010 @8:28 am

I have done all those things to get my sound icon back to the system tray. It comes on some of the time so I’ve found that if you keep touching your volume button on the keyboard as soon as the task bar appears, it will always show your sound icon.

Dianna Said,

April 5th, 2010 @6:33 am

Thanks. Used the Task manager option and the sound button reappeared.

Farlon Said,

May 2nd, 2010 @7:22 am

Finally I found the fix. It worked!! Thanks for the help!!

Mish Said,

May 17th, 2010 @3:19 pm

Thanks Nina … i terminated the process “explorer.exe” but didn’t know how to restart “explorer.exe”. So i shut down and restart, —> control panel —> sound and was able to get my volume icon as well as my network icon back too.