I have recently been having a problem in Vista, where the three common notification items (battery, network, and volume) don’t show on the notification bar. It’s a pain, and if you try and fix it by right-clicking on the Start bar and clicking Properties, and then clicking the Notification Area tab you just get all of the items greyed out. It’s ridiculous and it never used to happen – it just started happening a couple of weeks ago.

So, when it frustrated me enough to persuade me to Google the issue, I found I’m not the only one with a problem. Apparenly, it’s an issue with the Local Group Policy Editor, and can be fixed either with the Local Group Policy Editor (if you have it enabled) or via the Registry Editor.

If you go to this site, you’ll find some guides that can fix the problem via the Local Group Policy Editor or via the Registry Editor.

However, I still can’t seem to get it working properly. Some of the icons show but I’m usually missing one or two.

Update 24.9.09: I thought rather than linking to another site, I could write a guide on how to fix it myself :P. So, if you’re having the problem, follow these steps to solve it:

1. First, click Start and type in the search box regedit, then press enter.

2. The Registry Editor will open. You now need to use the plus signs next to each category to reach the key below.

Navigate through the following threads:

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

3. Delete the following keys by highlighting them and pressing the delete key, confirming by clicking Yes:

IconsStream

PastIconsStream

Now simply log off and log back on and your problem should be solved, or restart the explorer.exe process if you don’t want to log off.

Hopefully, if all that goes smoothly, you should have the icons back (thank god!)