icons have disappeared from my task bar

[youoldduffer]

Hey folks, just came home from work to find half the icons in my task bar missing???? Daemontools Avast and Ati catalyst, blackhawk sound icon.
I tried restarting and also system restore.
I am by no streach of the imagination good with pc's so any advice must be in idiot speak please

[NeedMoarFarms]

Try just starting one of the programs and see if it's icons appear in the task bar?

[Will404]

XP or Vista??

Try:
1. Start
2. Controll Pannel
(3. Classic View)
4. Taskbar and Start Menu
5. Notification Area
6. Uncheck the "hide inactive icons" box

Then the arrow on the bottom left of the taskbar will go, and all the icons will be there at all times.

[youoldduffer]

Try just starting one of the programs and see if it's icons appear in the task bar?

Did that bud and the icon appeared but again when i restarted the pc it was again missing

[youoldduffer]

XP or Vista??

Try:
1. Start
2. Controll Pannel
(3. Classic View)
4. Taskbar and Start Menu
5. Notification Area
6. Uncheck the "hide inactive icons" box

Then the arrow on the bottom left of the taskbar will go, and all the icons will be there at all times.

Yup tried that to but again nuffin except my messenger icon.

What i tried next was to uninstall avast then reinstall and low and behold its icon it back so i just uninstalled/reinstalled all the missing icon prog's and now they all appear when i restart.
Just confused why this would happen in the first place????

Cheers for the sugestions though guys

[Zak33]

Hey folks, just came home from work to find half the icons in my task bar missing????

were they in the bottom LEFT of the screen, or bottom RIGHT?

If they were bottom right, then they were running all the time and you might not need them.
If they were bottom left, they were just shortcuts to the program startup.

Personally I keep as little running as humanly possible, and have shortcuts to the software for when I need it

NONE OF WHICH explains where they've gone!

[strike-down]

Maybe something has altered the start up registry keys for those programs?
Or if they were in your startup folder, have they been deleted from there?

[sammyc]

XP or Vista??

Try:
1. Start
2. Controll Pannel
(3. Classic View)
4. Taskbar and Start Menu
5. Notification Area
6. Uncheck the "hide inactive icons" box

Then the arrow on the bottom left of the taskbar will go, and all the icons will be there at all times.

On windows XP Pro I just right-click Start, Properties, Taskbar, & go from there.. along with step 6, also go to customize, check whether the icons in question are set at 'always show' & therefore should definitely be there at all times. Can't help with why it should have happened, have occasionally lost an icon or so & a restart always restores them..

[merdat]

What steps would you take if you ain't got no desktop icons or 'start button' ?.

[strike-down]

press ctrl alt del, then click file, new task, then type explorer.exe should work . .

[merdat]

press ctrl alt del, then click file, new task, then type explorer.exe should work . .

Thanks i'll try that once I get back to having a look at erring drive.

[youoldduffer]

XP or Vista??

Try:
1. Start
2. Controll Pannel
(3. Classic View)
4. Taskbar and Start Menu
5. Notification Area
6. Uncheck the "hide inactive icons" box

Then the arrow on the bottom left of the taskbar will go, and all the icons will be there at all times.

Sorry will meant to say I'm on Vista 64

[youoldduffer]

were they in the bottom LEFT of the screen, or bottom RIGHT?

If they were bottom right, then they were running all the time and you might not need them.
If they were bottom left, they were just shortcuts to the program startup.

Personally I keep as little running as humanly possible, and have shortcuts to the software for when I need it

NONE OF WHICH explains where they've gone!

Bottom right I'm the same i like to keep as little running as poss so i only have Catalyst, daemon tools,Avast and The BlackHawk sound thingie

I reinstalled those that were missing and after trying a couple of restarts they seem to be staying put. The only thing I can think of is i installed the latest Ati cat 8.11 and when playing BF2 it crashed and when i had to re-start they were gone, I have since went back to the 8.8 cat as I have had no prob's with this.

[Nailz]

In future run CCleaner and reset all saved window and taskbar locations.