You may have one day noticed your network or volume icons disappeared from your system tray (bottom right of your computer screen). This is a common problem.

There are a couple of fixes to this issue. One of them has to do with editing the registy directly if the icons are greyed out and you cannot check them.

First rght click on your toolbar and select “properties“. Click the tab that says “notification area” and you have a list of icons that can appear there. Check the ones you want displayed and “apply”. They should suddenly appear.

If the options are greyed out then you will have to do the following…

Registry Fix:

Go to start and type in Run

type in regedit and hit enter

When regedit starts up to fo file > search then search for “IconStreams” without the quotes. Delete the registry keys containing this item. This should allow you to access the greyed out items in your system tray properties area.

GPEDIT FIX:

In certain versions of Windows Vista you can use gpedit.msc to access the greyed out icons for the system tray.

Go to start and type in gpedit.msc and hit enter

In the left pane of the gpedit window click on User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Start Menu and Taskbar

Once you are there make sure you select the appropriate item, right click it and click properties. Then make sure it says disabled.

Check your system tray properties once again to make sure they are not greyed out and you can check and apply them to get them back into your tray area.