Don’t you just hate weird little computer problems/mysteries that happened for no apparent reason? I sure as hell do! This morning I get up, get my coffee and boot up my laptop and all is fine. After a little while I notice that some of the icons in the task tray are missing, specifically the bluetooth,, sound, battery, and connection were all gone! I tried bringing up the task manager notification area and those icons were grayed out. So like most people I go to google type in my problem and lo and behold there are a lot of people with Vista that experienced the same problem. After reading some of the solutions by various people I decided to try the one that did not involve messing with the Registry Editor.
So here you go folks…simple and it works!
- R click by task tray to bring up task manager
- On processes tab find “Explorer.exe”
- Click End Process
- Click on applications tab……>File……>New Task
- Type Explorer.exe
By restarting this executable corrects the settings.
Icons are all back and the area that was previously grayed out in the task manager notification are now working. Still wish I knew why this happened though.
Many of my working years were with computers and that goes way back…like back to the day before pc’s when everything was on punch cards. Anyway, as the computer world evolved, so did the unexplained problems. Many times, the only answer to these happenings was due to the phase of the moon. Even the programmers didn’t have answers or didn’t want to take blame for the problems. We were happy to let the moon take the blame for whatever weird thing happened.
Have a great Sunday. It’s a gorgeous day over here today.
Well I am making a note of that fix just in case I need it. I really like SIMPLE and boy that sure is! Glad you figured it out. What the heck would we all do without GOOGLE search anyway? I must use it at least 5 times a day. : D Take care
WELL I LIKED THAT SOLUTION WHICH YOU PROVIDED IN FACT ABOUT TWO MONTHS AGO I HAD THE SAME PROBLEM WITH MY LAPTOP BUT I HAD TO RESOLVE THAT PROBLEM FROM A COMPUTER ENGINEER!BUT YOUR POST IS DEFINITELY HELPFUL FOR OTHERS HAVING THE SAME PROBLEMS!
Didn’t you feel a sense of accomplishment? When these things happen to me, I take the lazy woman’s way out. I call up my older son and ask him to fix it. That way I don’t have to think about it because as you may know, I focus all my thinking on ridding the world of stupers (one stuper at a time).
PS Are you still happy with your iPhone? I’m thinking of finally getting one.
I wish this method worked on xp – here closing explorer.exe means you need to restart the machine. And these icons – they keep disappearing.
I tried to figure it out once and it’s supposedly related to the script that notifies you of unused icons on your desktop. Makes sense, in a way, but I’m not convinced.
Do you have a method for xp ?
I’ve figured out several problems by just googling them.
I confess I often take Keli’s way out.
I’m still trying to figure out DogBook.
Cindy - working in hospitals for many years we too blamed the phase of the moon for many horrendous night shifts. Guess it got blamed for more than I’d thought
Carol – life before google? Hard to even remember that huh?
Cake topper – it was an easy solution that worked, hope you have no further computer problems with the same issue.
Keli – if I had a solution like yours I would have taken it too. About the iPhone, yes very happy with it. Sent you an email on likes/dislikes.
Gry - supposedly this works for XP too but I am no computer expert. Did you try google? There are a lot of topics on this issue.
Cilicious - maybe I can help you with dog book. Let me know where you’re stuck.
Another reason why I love my Macs!
: )