Systray Icons missing after start-up - lonely Clock !!!

[ALAN_BR]

After the usual power-on start-up sequence I can apply may password and log on.
About 5 seconds later I get my desktop background, and another 4 seconds later the task bar complete with the clock icon arrives, and all the desktop shortcuts appear.

During the next 10 seconds - sometimes stretching to 60 Seconds, the Clocks neighbours appear ( "Volume", Safely Remove Hardware", etc. ) - or perhaps they don't.
After this the P.C. is ready for me to use.

My son tells me that this is a known issue with Windows XP.  I believe him but am still not yet ready to follow his advice and use Vista.

Is there any advice or known fixes that you can suggest for this known issue ?

Additional information :-

I have XP Home edition.  Whilst using SP2 it had a 90% chance of a full house upon start-up, and typically on the 10% when it failed there were still at least a random choice of at least 3 of the 5 that should arrive.

This week with SP3 there was only a 50% chance of a full house, and a 40% chance that some of the icons will appear, with a 10% chance that nothing will come and sit next to the clock.

I have significantly improved the chances of success by removing ERUNT from my start up folder, and arranging that it only performs its 50 MByte Registry backup AFTER all the icons have appeared.

My remaining problem could be my Antivirus ESET NOD32 version 2.7.  On the few start-ups since I removed ERUNT from the start-up processing most of the icons appear and the system is ready 15 to 20 seconds after I log on, but twice it took up to 60 seconds with few if any icons appearing beside the clock, and each time I got a message from ESET that it had downloaded AND INSTALLED a new virus signature update.  Whenever the start-up was reasonably quick and most icons appeared it was because ESET found it was up to date and there was nothing to download and install.

I know that ESET problem will go away if I prohibit automatic updates, but that is only a partial solution should there be other things on start-up that are also variable.

I do not want to endanger my virus protection with what could be only a partial fix.

I would much rather do something to properly fix this, even if I have to hack the registry - just please don't tell me to install Vista !!!

Regards
Alan

[Spoiler]

do you see a large arrow pointing to the left near your clock? Something like this....  <

If you click on it you should see all the programs that you are talking about.

If you want them to be shown all the time right click on the task bar and pick properties than uncheck the box called "Hide Inactive Icons"

[ALAN_BR]

No - no such arrow.

Did as you say, and found the "Hide Inactive Icons" was already unchecked.

This evening I had a fairly quick start-up, and ESET NOD32 found nothing to update,
BUT I still suffered loss - the ESET icon and the Power/battery icon failed to appear.

The bottom of the screen now appears as attached

Regards
Alan


[recovering disk space -- attachment deleted by admin]

[Spoiler]

It looks like you have another tool bar above the task bar. Can you tell me what that is?

Also you can try to right click the task bar ....properties and than next to the "Hide the Icons" box is a custom button. Click it and than pick what icons you want to show or just click restore defaults.

[ALAN_BR]

Thanks.  You may be on the right track here.

To the right of the "Hide the Icons" box is a "Customize" button which I never considered because it was greyed out.  I have just checked the "Hide ..." box and that has enabled the button.

Upon clicking I see a lot of items
Under Current Items it shows
Volume,
Comodo Firewall, and
Safely Remove hardware.
This correctly identifies what is sitting next to the clock right now.
Past Items has 23 members, including my absent friends
ESET NOD32, and
ON AC power

I was very excited to see that each were set to "Hide when inactive"
and that setting could be changed to "Always Show" or "Always Hide",
and thought that by using the "Always Show" option it would give double certainty
that together with UN-checking the "Hide ..." box these icons would have to appear.
Unfortunately upon closer examination only 25 of the 26 items were set to hide,
and the one item set "Always Show" is the ESET NOD32 icon,
and this is NOT showing even though task Manager can see both the ESET SYSTEM and ESET User interface processes - I am still protected - it is only the icon that failed.

So I think this is not much better than a no hoper after all,
but now you have introduced me to this facility I will set what I need to "Always Show" before I return the "Hide ..." box to unchecked state.
I will get back to report success if it works.

There is no tool bar above the task bar - what you can see is the bottom corner of the Firefox browser which was in use at the time.

Thank you for your efforts

Regards
Alan

[ALAN_BR]

Hi

The icons were better behaved and appeared correctly at start-up for two days, but I think that was just luck and/or no overnight anti-virus updates for ESET to catch up on.

It is now just as bad as it was previously, and I have seen only the Volume icon appearing beside the clock.

Further suggestions to fix this would be welcome.

ALTERNATIVELY :-

I could paste icons on the bottom right of the desktop immediately above systray,
and these icons could be short cuts needing a double click to launch whatever happens to be missing from systray.

I know what and how to do this for my anti-virus and Firewall.
I would appreciate help with the relevant path and file name as short cuts to :-
Safely Remove Hardware;
On AC Power
Volume

I could alternatively/additionally try adding such shortcuts to the conclusion of my supervisory batch file, and I would appreciate advise upon any additional option switches/modes etc that would avoid giving me a second set of the same icons when the initial start-up has provided all that I needed.
Is there any way that my supervisory batch file could detect which icons are already in place, and which have not arrived ?

Regards
Alan