Volume Control Icon Disapears in the system tray 1

[firewolfrl]

No matter what I do to enable the Volume control icon in the system tray. it disapears on reboot.
When the icon is not there, I can tell Windows to display it with Start, Settings, Control Panel, Multimedia, and check the box "Show Speaker in Taskbar".
On reboot it is not there....
it is an annoyance to do this all the time
the system has sound and works great except for the lost volume icon.
system specs:
Abit KT7A-Raid 1.4 mh cpu 1gig ram
2 CDR drives
1 DVD drive
4 60 gig (on Highpoint controller)
ATI 7500 all-in-wonder
SB live 5.1 (latest XP drivers)
Creative decoder card (hollywood drivers)
Intel network card

 

[bcastner]

You can obtain the utility SysTrayX for trial. It is inexpensive and will solve the problem.

As far as I know if the volume icon is not there at boot, you have to go as you did an unable it, apply, then re-enable it without resorting to a utility like above.

 

[Kocky]

I think you should have a look at the software of your Creative decoder card. Probably there is a setting for it.

 

[firewolfrl]

I found the problem is related to the ATI Radeon All-in-Wonder driver configuration.(old and new)
I did some research and found the freeware called "Volume Control".

http://www.barrett.net/specialutilities.html

ATI Support is all but useless with canned responses.
I uninstalled and updated the ATI drivers and assoiciated software, removed and reinstalled the Creative 5.1 XP drivers, extracted and repaired from the XP CD sndvol32.exe,and installed "Volume Control".

Now the Icon appears.

To tell you the truth I don't know what caused the problem or what specific action fixed it. but I suspect the program "Volume Control" fixed part of the problem.
the ATI updates really did not make much of a difference.

Thanks for the help.

 

[firewolfrl]

Lost it again. I spoke too soon
I will wait and see what the forum comes up with?????

 

[ttterk]

You probably checked this, but you don't mention it, so . . .

Try right-clicking the taskbar, and see if the box labeled "Hide inactive icons" under "Notifications" is checked. If it is, uncheck it.

Otherwise, good luck.

 

[firewolfrl]

Well, the problem with the speaker Icon was a symptom of a bigger problem.
I started losing other tray icons and did some research.
explorer.exe is delayed or bogged down by other software that is loading and stops systray.exe from loading the icons
the work-around is to log off then relog on or load a second user profile and on boot wait for a 20-40 seconds to let explorer.exe to load before clicking on the profile I want to load.
if I let windows autoload. I lose most of my systray icons.
these problems started after I started using an ATI card.
I have more research to do to trace the file that is bogging down explorer.exe at boot.
and I have no virus's in the systom.
thanks for the help

 

[bcastner]

Get rid of the Tray Icon for ATI, and check if ATI installed a service (right-click My Computer|Manage|Services|Services. If so disable the service and stop it.

If you have uPnP enabled, the icon is well known for screwing up other icons. Disable Display Icon in Internet Gateway, Properties.

You might need to increase the size of your icon cache. 500 is the default. Use the free Xteq Tweak Utility if you need to bump it.

 

[firewolfrl]

to bcastner,
explorer.exe was loading too late on boot.
I used the bootvis tool to analyze the boot-times of the apps that load. explorer.exe loaded a full 24-40 seconds into the boot. at the same time my apps were starting to load at 22-35 seconds. explorer.exe never gave a recordable error in the event logs. due to all the hardware crap I have on my machine, I may have a driver or old "DLL" from previous hardware that might be causing the hangup.
I used mike lin's startup delayer to hold the apps till after 40 seconds, most of the apps minus the volume icon loaded fine. I am impatient, I don't want to let my machine's boot-up take a long time.

The program you suggested works great and solved the systray icon problem (including the volume icon)
the indicator the the problem was fixed , the windows log-on wave starts before my desktop even shows. (before it started in the middle of loading the desktop)
my thanks is a star and a program.
"MaxTweaks" is a great program for speeding up XP
this is a great site.

http://www.tech52.com/