Saving System Tray icon settings XP

[Yehnfikm8Gq]

My settings for the system tray icons regularly change for no apparent reason, eg "Always Show" becomes "Hide When Inactive". I want to be able to store the settings for my common applications (using reg file or in ME) and run a macro to restore them. Does anyone know where in the registry the settings are kept?....and no I don't want instructions how to do it manually.

 

I know how to reset via the TrayNotify keys but that's not much help. The key

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer

may be involved but I can't find any obvious data. Settings may also be stored in the application's area.

[paul]

My settings for the system tray icons regularly change for no apparent reason, eg "Always Show" becomes "Hide When Inactive". I want to be able to store the settings for my common applications (using reg file or in ME) and run a macro to restore them. Does anyone know where in the registry the settings are kept?....and no I don't want instructions how to do it manually.

 

I know how to reset via the TrayNotify keys but that's not much help. The key

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer

may be involved but I can't find any obvious data. Settings may also be stored in the application's area.

You don't mention what OS you're using!

 

Does this help?

Tray Icons

[Yehnfikm8Gq]

Oh yes I did! It's in the title of the topic.

 

Thanks for the link. It's the best reference I've seen. I'm not sure it helps much as the most common problem for others is icons not appearing during startup. That is not my issue which is icon states changing but the icon is still there. It's a very frustrating problem - many people have asked about it on the Net and how to change in the registry. The question is usually answered, very annoyingly, "Right click on the taskbar, Properties.......". I'm looking for a fix to save settings so that I can write back settings from ME when the problem occurs.

 

I'm not sure when my icon states change and it can be from "Always Show" to "Hide When Inactive" or vice-versa. It's one of those things you may notice hours or days after it has happened. It could be across a reboot. I've tried the unPnP tool from Gibson's Research but that is unlikely to be effective. I've tried monitoring both file and registry changes across a change in icon state setting and have not found anything useful. From the article you pointed to, it seems XP is flawed re this issue. Later OSs have alternative solutions I believe.

 

I also have the problem with Tray Tooltips disappearing behind the Taskbar but I found a script to correct that which I run with ME. It does not stop the problem recurring from time to time.

[paul]

Oh yes I did! It's in the title of the topic.

If I come across a road sign, some of which is in capital letters, that's the part my eyes refuse to read!

 

I rarely look at message headers in forums such as this one with so few messages!

[terrypin]

I wonder if you could identify the registry key by making a change in the tray's state then immediately running a 'file comparison' program?

 

I've occasionally used that technique, albeit not with the registry, using programs like Compare & Merge, Microsoft WinDiff or Beyond Compare.

 

Perhaps another line of pursuit might be with ProcMon, suitably filtered, displaying the entries in the seconds directly after the tray change?

 

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Terry, East Grinstead, UK

[Yehnfikm8Gq]

I've tried file changes and have not found anything useful. I did it by searching for *.* on the C: drive and listing by modified time. Filemon, Regmon and Procmon show the activity but there is no way of telling which may be relevant. Explorer.exe is constantly monitoring the Desktop and Task Bar and is the most likely perp. It is the only process running across an icon state setting change that could be relevant. The setting change must be in there somewhere and would be a RegSetValue process. If it's registry it is likely to be in HKCU, in particular the key I previously posted and the Control Panel\Desktop key. I could find no meaningful values - the only RegSetValue were in TaskBarSizeMove and TaskBarGlomming and were single DWORD values. No luck with other RegSet* or RegCreate* ops.

 

I found a link where someone wrote:

"Appears windows stores the "Always Hide", "Always Show", "Hide When Inactive" in the following key:

HKEY_Current_User\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\TrayNotify

In there is a IconStreams (fur currently running programs) and PastIconsStream (name explains what that is). The hard part is each is a huge byte that has the start up path of a app in it along with the switch on how to display. The harder part is it loads this key into memory at startup, all changes you do within the UI are done only to memory, then it rewrites the key on shutdown. Modifying the key ONLY works if you kill the explorer task."

 

I did not find any operation related to this key (which is huge, 72648 long when I checked) but that may tie in with it being in memory and rewriting the key on shutdown.

 

(edit) I exported the TrayNotify key (2MB). Next time I get the problem I'll try importing the key back. Unfortunately any changes made during the current session will not be incorporated so I assume you have to reboot and resave the TrayNotfiy key.

Edited April 4, 2010 by JohnS

[terrypin]

In there is a IconStreams (fur currently running programs) and PastIconsStream (name explains what that is). The hard part is each is a huge byte that has the start up path of a app in it along with the switch on how to display. The harder part is it loads this key into memory at startup, all changes you do within the UI are done only to memory, then it rewrites the key on shutdown. Modifying the key ONLY works if you kill the explorer task."

 

Is this section (and related parts) of Paul's link any help?

 

Cleaning up the registry

 

The following text contains links to registry setting files, which, except for the first one, are a bit stronger than the straight Ostuni workaround. If you want to check what they do before actually applying them, you can right-click on the link and elect to save the file to your hard disk. Then you can open it with a text editor like the Windows notepad editor and see what they do.

 

After two emails (see emails from Mark Medrano and Ingo Schupp below), the suspicion grows that the PastIconsStream registry entry can grow beyond proportions and hinder the systray icons. The solution is to click on systray_cleanup.reg, confirm the execution, then confirm the registry change, reboot your computer and test.

 

These registry entries can safely be deleted, because Windows automatically recreates them after the next two reboots. By the way, this registry file does about the same as running systray.reg and then systray_undo.reg (see below).

 

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Terry, East Grinstead, UK

[Yehnfikm8Gq]

quote from link: the suspicion grows that the PastIconsStream registry entry can grow beyond proportions and hinder the systray icons

You could be right, although I'm not sure of all the implications of the reg file which resets some Explorer policies to default. The PastIconsStream subkey is about 3x the size of IconStreams, which seems realistic.

 

I suppose it boils down to whether the issue will re-occur within a short time. There's no point in doing the reg cleanup with reboot if one or two icon states have gone awry and can be fixed manually in 10 secs. My previous idea of importing back the TrayNotify key is probably going to need ending the Explorer.exe process and re-starting so ditto re manual correction. I think using ME is out of the picture other than to run the reg file and reboot.

[paul]

And, of course, there's the long-standing bug XP has (which Windows 7 appears to have solved) of tray icon balloons being half-hidden behind the icons themselves. I tried several supposed fixes for this problem, all without long-term success.

[Yehnfikm8Gq]

And, of course, there's the long-standing bug XP has (which Windows 7 appears to have solved) of tray icon balloons being half-hidden behind the icons themselves. I tried several supposed fixes for this problem, all without long-term success.

I noted in Post #3 that I also have that problem, fixed temporarily with a script by other and run by my own ME macro. I usually run it about once a day. That is definitely worth automating.

[paul]

I noted in Post #3 that I also have that problem, fixed temporarily with a script by other and run by my own ME macro. I usually run it about once a day. That is definitely worth automating.

Any chance you might share that script, or provide a reference to its location please?

[terrypin]

Any chance you might share that script, or provide a reference to its location please?

 

I don't know if this is one you already found unsatisfactory, from

http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_t.htm

but I intend to try it myself next time the problem arises:

 

Taskbar - Tool Tips Hidden Behind the Task Bar: FIX

 

Go to Start/All Programs: Hover over any program listed, right click and select Sort by Name. Repeat once more. All done!

 

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Terry, East Grinstead, UK

[Yehnfikm8Gq]

I didn't think to post a link. I can't find the script and I later changed to ToolTipFix.exe from Neosmart. I originally ran v1 which has no install requirement. v2 has the option to run as a Service to permanently monitor, or as a standalone install. I've used the standalone option as I have too many services running already.

 

I've seen comments saying it does not support x64 but I cannot confirm - that may be referring to v1. If you Google Tooltipfix and variants you may come across some links to a similar tools.

[terrypin]

This link includes the 'Kelly fix' I mentioned above (but note the apparent need to apply it twice!) and a couple of others:

http://dan.hersam.com/2006/09/18/tooltips-...-taskbar-in-xp/

 

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Terry, East Grinstead, UK

[paul]

I didn't think to post a link. I can't find the script and I later changed to ToolTipFix.exe from Neosmart. I originally ran v1 which has no install requirement. v2 has the option to run as a Service to permanently monitor, or as a standalone install. I've used the standalone option as I have too many services running already.

Yes, I tried that NeoSmart fix, and the one from Kellys-korner, but neither worked for long!

[Yehnfikm8Gq]

Yes, I tried that NeoSmart fix, and the one from Kellys-korner, but neither worked for long!

 

Did you try the "Install as a Service" version of ToolTipFix? That is permanently running and you should never see the problem again.