A week ago, my power, network, and volume icons disappeared from the tray area of Windows 7. When I chose “Customize notification icons” and then “Turn system icons on or off”, the choices were grayed out like the image to the left.
I tried the Group Policy and registry solutions that I found online, but with no success.
Here’s how I finally fixed it:
- Run a Command Prompt as administrator, then “sfc /scannow”
- Find the sfc log file at C:\Windows\Logs\CBS\CBS.log and search it for “cannot repair”.
I discovered that 6 .dll files from C:\Windows\system32 were messed up. I found a nice explanation here as to how to extract the files from the Windows 7 installation DVD using 7-Zip, which I already like for other zipping and unzipping tasks.
Unfortunately, you can’t just copy the files into C:\Windows\system32. Here’s what I had to do to replace the .dll files:
- Extract the files from the installation DVD into a local folder, such as c:\extracted-files
- Boot the installation DVD, choose to repair Windows, and get to a Command Prompt
- Use the command line to copy the .dll files from c:\extracted-files to c:\windows\system32
- Reboot
That did it! I don’t know how the files were corrupted, but replacing them got the system icons back.
is there any way to get the system icons back , not by extracting the files …
If you have a full backup, you could go back a while and get them from there. Another option might be an identical machine running Windows 7.
Karl
For me I just went to regedit and deleted iconstreams and pasticonstreams then restarted my PC and the icons were there once again.
This is just a temp fix, but it works.
I think I tried that, and it didn’t solve the problem for me.
Just running “sfc /scannow” repaired my corrupt .dlls (had about 5 from messing with a custom theme). Rebooted and got the icon back. Thanks!
how do you ‘reboot’ ?
Restart your machine.
Just to let you know, if you can’t open cbs.log, then copy cbs.log and then open the copied one, as original is used constantly by system I suppose…
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http://support.microsoft.com/kb/322756/ – How to back up and restore the registry in Windows
Click Start.
In the Start Search field, type regedit.exe and then press Enter.
If you are prompted for an administrator password or for confirmation, type the password, or click Allow.
Locate and then click the following registry subkey:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\TrayNotify
In the Details pane, click the IconStreams registry entry.
On the Edit menu, click Delete, and then click Yes.
In the Details pane, click the PastIconsStream registry entry.
On the Edit menu, click Delete, and then click Yes.
Exit Registry Editor.
Restart the Explorer.exe process. To do these, follow these steps:
Press CTRL+SHIFT+ESC.
On the Processes tab in Task Manager, click the explorer.exe process, and then click End Process two times.
On the File menu, click New Tasks (Run), type explorer, and then click OK.
Exit Task Manager.
Once Explorer.exe has restarted, right click on the clock and choose “Customize Notification Icons”.
Ensure that Power is set to “Show icon and notifications”.
Click on “Turn system icons on or off”
Ensure that Power is set to “On”.
Click on OK and close the Control Panel.
Hope that helps, have a great day!
Worked like a charm! Thanks!!
@nogooddogooder
great it worked me thanks for your help
AMAZING !!! this worked !!
tried everything thing else that i found online but to no avail
Thank you.
Fantastic procedure it was of great help.
thans alot , its was great help.
that procedure still had me with greyed out [off] Network icon
Sorry that it didn’t work for you. There are tons of other things to try – this is just the one that worked for me.
make sure that you run regedit as admin
and stop and restart explorer.exe
see instructions from nogooddogooder
Thanks for the tips, Dave.
searched all through, but eventually the our tip got my tray icons back in place…thanks