Avast seems to eat up other ("foreign") tray icons ...

[ProloSozz]

I have here a Hercules eCAFÉ EC-900CW from Guillemot that has WinXP preinstalled. Standard-Virus-Protection is Avast - but I have on other PCs also Avast. Not only that the eCAFÉ is brand new - I just have made a total reset with new installation of the whole WinXP to observe the Problem.

As the user insists of having his own system appearance colors, the display settings are set to "Windows classical" - color scheme "Plum (high res.) - with several colors adapted manually.

Configuring the system worked fine - and the system tray always had about 8 to 10 tray icons visible. But as soon as Avast was installed, the system tray only shows the icons "wireless", "wifi" and "avast" when starting up the system. Making a log-off and a re-log-on, many more icons are there - as they also should directly at system boot: "LAN", "wifi", "realtek audio", "wireless", "audio/loudspeaker", "screen toys", "battery/power", "avast". Please note that ALL of them have the "show icon in system tray" selected!

This system is not the only one that the tray icons are eaten away - also on other systems the same thing happens and tray icons disappear. There is an issue known when using "own colors" in the appearance - but the question is: what is involved? Avast seems to be one of these that actively don't let icons appear at system boot. And it is also not obvious why the icons don't appear directly at system boot, but they appear after logoff and relogon.

Thanks for finding solutions to that issue.

[Pedro Hin]

You may already know about this, but I will try to help anyway.

Windows XP starts to 'hide' inactive icons in the toolbar once a certain quantity of icons are displayed.

Right-click the mouse on an unoccupied area of the taskbar and select 'properties'. Take the check mark out of the box that says 'Hide inactive icons'.

This might not be the problem, so if it is not, simply disregard

[ProloSozz]

Sorry, but this is not the problem as this checkbox is unchecked so that inactive icons are not hidden.

[Zyndstoff (aka Steven Gail)]

This "problem" has been dealt with quite often in this forum. Please use the search.
It is not an avast-problem.

Best regards
Zyndstoff
 

[ProloSozz]

Sorry, but I have to reject that kind of answer! Not only that it is not helping at all, it even does not tell what the search terms shold be - and that the problem IS NOT the disappearing of the Avast-Ball-Icons, but of many other tray icons - and searching with something like "tray icons disappear" does not give any usable result dealing with THAT problem (and not the disappearing of the avast-icons) - or can you please give at least one link to a thread that is dealing about that problem???

[Zyndstoff (aka Steven Gail)]

I would, if I could remember...
Give me a minute or two, okay?

btw: rejecting answers is no option here. 

[ProloSozz]

btw: rejecting answers is no option here. 

I also know that I don't like to bother here as the problem itself might not be avast itself. but as reinstalling the whole system, the problem came at that moment when avast was installed. so avast must be involved - even if avast might not be the source of the problem.

btw: the VRDB-icon also does not appear at system startup (when splitted), but the avast-icon is there.

[Zyndstoff (aka Steven Gail)]

So, here we go. Avast may have triggered it, but it's a Win XP timing prob.

http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=51057.0

I had this disappearing phenomenon on my Win XP system quite often.
Read also http://winhlp.com/node/16

Greetings
Zyndstoff

[ProloSozz]

I had this disappearing phenomenon on my Win XP system quite often.
Read also http://winhlp.com/node/16

Thanks - I'll have a look at it!

[Zyndstoff (aka Steven Gail)]

I'd recommend that you disable all those "nobody-needs" tray icons via control panel: nvidia/ati icons for instance, sound mixer like realtek and all that stuff.
I only had those icons in the tray: antivirus software, firewall, network and volume control.

All others are not really needed - how often do you change screen resolution oder change the sound-mixer settings?

[ProloSozz]

I'd recommend that you disable all those "nobody-needs" tray icons via control panel: nvidia/ati icons for instance, sound mixer like realtek and all that stuff.
I only had those icons in the tray: antivirus software, firewall, network and volume control.
All others are not really needed - how often do you change screen resolution oder change the sound-mixer settings?

If there is a tray icon, I usually use it sooner or later. And the fact that the tray icon is there shows also, that the system ist working fine and does not hang somewhere. And I also prefer showing the tray icon so that I can see if certain programs are running or not (windows messenger is such a case that I don't use but is used by outlook-express).

I did the workaround by hiding the UPnP network icons.

[Zyndstoff (aka Steven Gail)]

If that helped, fine.

When I encountered this probs, sometimes this helped:
disable any icon (as you already did)
reboot
re-enable the before disabled icon
reboot
By some kind of MS miracle, everything was then back to working order.
Maybe try that?

Best regards
Zyndstoff