Sorry, that's not it. The "hide inactive icons" checkbox is clear.
most, if not all, of the missing itcons are listed under "past items" in the listing under
"customize/hide inactive items", but they don't appear either way.

Your icons are probably just hidden.  Windows XP does this automatically when the icons have not been accessed (i.e. by you clicking on them) for awhile.  Right click on a blank portion of the taskbar and choose "Properties".  See if "Hide inactive icons" is checked.  If it is, then Windows is "helpfully" hiding the icons that you haven't used lately for you -- preventing visual clutter, I presume. 

You can change this behaviour by clicking on "Customize" and choosing which icons you want to always see or always hide, or by unchecking the "Hide inactive icons" button.

Hope this helps -- Pauline

This is one of the annoyances I hate about XP, as I like for all of my icons to show all the time. The only way I have found to solve the problem is to periodically clear past items from the notification area and start fresh. Instructions are here:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;283084

Then I right click the taskbar, select properties, customize, and select "always show" for everything. But, alas, this is only a temporary fix. I have searched high and low for a permanent fix, but none is to be found.

You could also add this to Registry to make sure settings are saved.

When Windows exits it normally saves the desktop layout, including icon location, appearance and other parameters. This setting disables any changes from being saved therefore allowing you to preserve a configured layout.

Open your registry and find the key below.

Create a new DWORD value, or modify the existing value called 'NoSaveSettings' set the value to equal '0'.

Exit your registry, you may need to restart for the changes to take effect.

User Key: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\
Explorer]

NoSaveSettings REG_DWORD 0x00000001 (0)
 

Thanks a LOT to all for your suggestions. I am trying all of them but no success so far.

I tried the reset that Tammy suggested, which did remove the "Past Items" but didn't help me keep the current items.

John, I checked the registry and found that the
User Key: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\
Explorer] was already set to:
NoSaveSettings REG_DWORD 0x00000001 (0)

I'm wondering if perhaps my Taskbar or Explorer.exe is somehow corrupted. Any thoughts on that?

OK , you could try System Restore to point where they all showed.

Thanks Gary,
I Did a System Restore to a week ago, and all my icons came back!
>A side note: After I did that, I downloaded the latest MS patch (which didn't download properly)
and the icons went away again.
I did another System Restore and I'm back to normal.
Now I'm afraid to get the MS patch!
Who knows...?

What the MS patch (Hotfix) ID number.?

also you can check Add or Remove Program to see if Hotfix is shown there & if so Remove from there.

Message Edited by gryjhnhpe on 09-14-2003 07:34 AM