XP: Settings for hidden tray icons lost on restart

Hi everyone,

I've had this problem a few times in the past but lately it's been happening so often that I decided to give it some time to try and solve it.

The problem is that after restarting my computer (running Win XP SP3), all icons in the system tray (next to the clock) lose all settings that I've made regarding their visibility - while I had left some of them to be "Always show", most were on "Always hide", such that there weren't too many icons taking up taskbar space.

I noticed this problem happens right after restarting the computer - not after *every* restart though, I have a suspicion that it might only happen after restarts prompted by Windows Updates.

I did some searching but could not find anyone who had a similar problem (and solved it!). Can anyone help? Many thanks in advance!

PS: apologies for also cross-posting this on ComputerForum and DevHardware

 

Are you running Tweak UI or something in that effect ? Have you tried typing in msconfig under run and under startup check the list there ...

 

Hey, thanks for your reply. I have run TweakUI once to change a few things. The startup items look alright to me, nothing suspicious..

 

How long as this problem been going on ? And when did you first notice it ? This sounds very strange, have you scanned for Virus / Trogen ? this does not sound normal..
also , have you installed ANY new software lately ? Also is this a legal copy of XP ? There is a Update from Microsoft that will detect illegal copies and it will cause havoc with your machine..

 

The first time must have been one year or so ago, and it's probably happened a dozen of times since then, probably upon restarting after a Windows update. My copy of Windows is legal, and I do regular AV scans, so I doubt this is the cause of it, since nothing else is broken, just this very strange problem which I suspect is a Windows bug. I have installed software lately, but I don't know how I could tell which one of them (if any) is causing this, especially since the problem is that hard to replicate.

 

Yea! it sounds like you have something screwy going on there, Can you reformat and install a fresh copy of XP ?

 

I certainly could, I guess my reason for seeking help here was to avoid doing that Thanks anyway!

 

My best answer would be to burn everything you want to keep to disk then Install a fresh copy of XP..