So unexpectedly my volume control is missing from the system tray on Windows 7. I goto the start menu and type volume and choose "Show or hide volume (speaker) icon on the taskbar" and it's disabled in there and set to off. I then click "customize notification icons" at the bottom and on the list that shows up, I see at the bottom "Volume" with the dropbox icon over it.
Does dropbox obliterate my volume control on accident? Anyone else have anything like this? Got any other ideas for me to try?
forgot to mention: All the volume functions work, it's just the icon that's missing. I can control the volume by the keyboard or through the actual volume control (by pulling up the control panel widget). I just don't have the icon on the systemtray. All the rest of the system works tho.
010 Answers
This can happen from time to time, but it is very rare and usually a restart will fix it.
The three solutions to try are (in order of convenience):
Restart the Windows Audio service.
- open the Start menu
- right-click on Computer and select Manage
- navigate to "Services and Applications" → Services
- right-click on Windows Audio and choose Restart
Restart Explorer.exe.
- press Ctrl+Alt+Delete and select Task Manager
- go to the Processes tab and find explorer.exe
- right-click it and select "End Process". Make sure you do not have any file operations (copy/move etc.) going. Explorer should automatically restart.
- If it doesn't, then in Task Manager, go to File → "New Task (Run...)", type in
explorer, click OK and it should be back.
Restart the computer.
Go to control Panel, in that open Notification Area Icons
In that window in the bottom side click on the Turn System icons on or off please select on in the icon behaviour of volume, and click ok
....that's it
I'm running Windows 7.
I could not quickly find 'Notification Area' in Control Panel, so I simply typed in "notification area" after clicking on the start button (lower left)
Pick the first response,'Notification Area Icons'.
Choose 'turn system icons on or off'. You should be able to pick which ones to show.
If the volume control is greyed out choose 'Restore default icon behaviours'.
And finally restart your computer.
I came across this and since none of these solutions worked for me, I thought I'd share what did (from here):
1
- Back up the Registry by creating a restore point.
- Go to Start > Run (or Windows-key + R), type in
regeditand hit OK.- Navigate to the key
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\TrayNotify.- Delete the values
IconStreamsandPastIconsStream.- Open up the Task Manager (Ctrl + Shift + Esc), go to the Processes tab, select
explorer.exeand click End Process.- Open the Applications tab and click New Task at the bottom-right of the window.
- In the message box that pops up type in
explorer.exeand hit OK.Explorer.exewill reload, and the missing icons should now be back in the system-tray where they belong.- Then if the volume bar isn't there, go to taskbar properties (where the volume was gray) and simply tick the box.
I have taken this from the Official Microsoft forum, I used it on Windows 10 and it worked for me:
- Left click on windows icon and choose settings.
- Click on display tab.
- Change the size of text to 125% Then apply.
- DO NOT LOG OUT YET. Choose sign out later!
- Change the text size back to 100% and click apply.
- Now sign out and sign back in.
Your volume icon will be back.
Sorry to say, the patch I used is not compatible with Windows 7, but for your information, I have/had exactly the same problem with Windows XP. The problem has obviously carried over into Windows 7.
I came across this explanation for the XP problem:
this is caused by a timing defect in the Windows function Shell_NotifyIcon in shell32.dll, which has a timeout fixed at 4 seconds. Combined with an unfavorable Windows API message this causes the problem, which befalls many heavily loaded computers that don't have ultra-fast hard disks. Changing the timeout to one minute and removing the unwanted message solves the problem
The author provided a patch, which once installed, fixed the problem for me. Scroll to Main problem and complete solution section, which mentions:
nars has posted a patcher tool (direct download link )that solves the problem even for future versions and makes patching very easy and quick. Thanks a lot, nars!
For me, something had set the registry entry HideSCAVolume under:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\ExplorerI fixed it by removing this entry and restarting Windows Explorer.
Fix for When Volume Icon is Missing and Grayed Out in Windows
The easiest and quickest way to return the sound icon to the system tray is to restart the systray.exe process:
- Open up the task manager with CTRL + SHIFT + ESC.
- File > New Task (Run...)
- systray.exe
In addition to all the other solutions mentioned here, you can use Windows Group Policy editor to fix it if nothing else works. The following works for not just volume icon, but for missing network icon, missing clock and missing power indicator from notification area as well.
Enable System Icons via GPMC
Click on Start Menu > Run and type in "gpedit.msc" without quotes. This will start the WIndows Group Policy editor.
Expand the tree to go to User Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Start Menu and Taskbar.
Change set the state value to Disable or Not Configured for the following group policies to enable showing or displaying of the icon in the notification area.
Clock: Remove Clock from the system notification area Volume: Remove the volume control icon Network: Remove the networking icon Power (battery) Icon: Remove the battery meter
Close the GPMC.
Restart Explorer, Log off and log on again, or restart computer to make the change effective.
User who uses Windows without Local Group Policy Editor can modify the registry value via Registry Editor instead.
Turn On System Icons for Displaying or Showing via Registry
Run Registry Editor (RegEdit.exe).
Navigate to the following registry key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer
Delete and remove the following registry values in the right pane:
HideClock HideSCAPower HideSCAVolume NoAutoTrayNotify HideSCANetwork NoTrayItemsDisplay
Then, navigate to the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer
Again, delete any of the following registry values if found:
HideClock HideSCAPower HideSCAVolume NoAutoTrayNotify HideSCANetwork NoTrayItemsDisplay
Exit Registry Editor.
Exit Explorer and restart, Logoff and login again, or reboot PC to apply the changes.
I have windows 7 Professional and restarting the service as was enough.
I believe this problem because of installing ubuntu on top.
