Classic Shell: Forum

Hiya there, for years I'm experiencing on various computers with Win7 that there are random system tray icons missing when Classic Shell is installed. If I reboot my computer sometimes all will come up, sometimes happen that there is one icon missing, sometimes more. It is totally random. The same I experienced now with the latest version 4.10. I was also reading similar things on this forum. Click.

I now experimenting with other versions if any of these will help. I observed similar problem already in this forum. Is there some setting i need to hit that this does not happen? I have to mention that system tray icons are not disappearing if Classic Shell is not installed. I suspect that system is to either too fast or too slow for Classic Shell and influencing that sometimes sequence in which icons are put on the system tray are not present.

thanks for your kind help,
best, d.

Yes, other people have reported a similar issue but I have been unable to reproduce it so far. I also don't use many programs with tray icons. The one time I got close was with SkyDrive, but after spending two days investigating it turned out to be unrelated to Classic Shell.

My theory is that while the start menu is collecting information about the system during startup it inadvertently interferes with other programs. But so far I have no evidence to prove or disprove this.

If you are seeing this problem consistently, and if you are willing to spend the time to help me get to the bottom of this, please contact me at classicshell@ibeltchev.com. I will make a custom build with some diagnostic features that may help us understand what is happening.

Hiya thanks for this. Yes I would be interested to help here if I can as I found this tool very good and can am also able to put some energy into this. I can also tell you this. Example I'm using certain version of Classic Shell and I usually do not have at problems at the beginning when i start to use the tools. This usually start to happen around 3rd or 4th reboot and then always randomly some icons will disappear from the system tray. It can happen that after restart again everything is OK. What I noted also that whenever I update classic shell to a newer version missing icons will come back without necessary restart.
I'm just thinking and maybe if possible to consider also a temporary solution to provide some kind of coded refresh of the icons if this problem is happening to the users, but sure I do not know if this is possible.

That is on short and I will send also my contact through email.
Best, Davor.

I also had this problem with Classic Shell 4.0 and 4.1. This problem goes away if I do any of the following:

1) Do not use Classic Shell (or prevent it from starting).

2) Go back to version 3.6.8.

3) In Classic Shell Start Menu Options, go to the "Start Button" tab and uncheck the check box for "Replace Start Button".


I use scenario 3 mentioned above with Classic Shell 4.1 and now I never have this problem.

What version of Windows do you use?

I'm using Windows 7 Ultimate.

That's quite interesting. For the longest time I suspected the problem had something to do with pre-loading of the menu items, because that was the single biggest change between versions 3.6.8 and 4.0. I was unable to find the cause.

However if you can reliably reproduce the problem when the start button is customized, and you can reliably not reproduce the problem with the original start button, that means I've been looking at the wrong system.

Please answer these questions:
1) Is it true that for you the problem never shows up with the original button?
2) How often does the problem show up when you use a custom button?
3) If you move the taskbar to a different edge of the monitor (like from the bottom to the side), do the missing icons reappear?
4) Are you willing to help me find the problem by running a new private build of the start menu? It may require multiple experiments.

For everybody else seeing this problem, can you check if using the original start button makes a difference?

It's strange. I cannot reproduce this problem anymore. I know before I tried unchecking the "replace start button" box, I tried some Windows 7 "fixes" I found on the web. None of these helped though. I then tried unchecking the replace start button thing and that cured the problem. But like I said, I now checked the "replace start button" to like I once had it, rebooted numerous times, and all my system tray icons appear now. I don't know why I can't reproduce the problem now. All I can say is to tell others that have this problem to try unchecking the replace start button box to see what happens.

Thanks.

I was having the same problem in Windows 7, with Classic Start Menu 4.0.4 causing system tray icons to fail to populate during system startup, in a semi-unpredictable manner. By "semi-unpredictable" I mean that there were certain tray icons that would almost always still appear, certain others that would appear about half the time, and certain others that would rarely appear, etc. Logging off my account and logging back would cause all the missing tray icons to instantly appear, but obviously that's not an optimal solution.

I found that after unticking the "start automatically for this user" option in Classic Start Menu 4.04, all my tray icons would populate upon system startup, as expected. I then tried the following to see if I could keep the auto-start functionality without causing the tray icons issue to return: I placed a shortcut to ClassicStartmenu.exe in C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup C:\Users\Rick441\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup (I am the only user of this computer). It worked! This way CSM still starts automatically at system startup, but without interfering with the populating of my tray icons. Fyi, I've never used anything but the original start button, so changing the start button couldn't have been the problem for me.

EDIT 11-2-14: Just noticed I cited the wrong folder for where I placed the shortcut to ClassicStartmenu.exe. (The path I incorrectly gave was to the All Users Startup folder.)

That's interesting! It's a shame we can't reproduce this bug, otherwise it would've been possible to fix it.

Edit: @Rick441, Yes, my PC is also set to auto logon but none of my tray icons ever disappear.

_________________
Links to some general topics:

● Compare Start Menus

● Read the Search box usage guide.

I am a Windows enthusiast and helped a little with Classic Shell's testing and usability/UX feedback.

Have you used Classic Shell version 3.6.8 or older on that machine? Looks like the general consensus is that something broke between version 3.6.8 and 4.0, however the changes between the two versions are quite significant and it is impossible to find the one thing that's causing the problem. Not without a reliable way to reproduce it anyway.

Just a wild stab here, but in trying to reproduce the problem, have any of your attempts been made with a system that does not require a login screen at startup? I am configured to boot directly into Windows, with no logon screen (and so no password required).

As for going back to 3.6.8, I was going to consider doing that if the problem persisted, but I preferred not to lose the latest functionality. I will note that I don't recall having this problem until 3 or 4 months ago, which would seem consistent with the issue occurring only with the new upgrade. Then again, if I *had* been "losing" some startup tray icons with the old version, but it was infrequent or mostly affected infrequently-used icons, I might not haven taken notice.

Also: After posting, I noticed that -- while a couple tray icons that were going missing almost 100% of the time were now *showing up* 100% of the time after my fix (including one that I was most concerned about) -- there were still occasionally some missing ones, though a lot fewer and a lot less frequently than before. So, while still keeping the ""start automatically for this user" option UNticked, I tried moving the startup shortcut I created for Classic Shell from C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup to C:\Users\<Username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup. (The five other Startup shortcuts I have remain in the All Users startup.) In the three days since making that change, I have had 100% of the tray icons appear about 90% of the time, i.e., a nearly-complete fix (I did quite a few reboots to check.)

One more thing: Back when I still had auto-start checked and tray icons were often going missing, I tried using System File Checker. It found roughly five files with integrity violations and repaired them. Then during the next two boots all my tray icons showed up. But then some started going missing again, so I reran sfc, it found and repaired the same files, and the tray came icons back 100% for another few boots. And the pattern kept repeating. But since unticking the auto-start option, sfc has come up clean every time. While these files don't mean anything to me, here is a portion of the log that shows files that kept appearing as corrupt when auto-start was ticked:

2014-08-25 00:05:31, Info CSI 00000324 [SR] Beginning Verify and Repair transaction
2014-08-25 00:05:32, Info CSI 00000325 [SR] Repairing corrupted file [ml:76{38},l:74{37}]"\??\C:\Windows\SysWOW64\wdi\perftrack"\[l:24{12}]"authui.ptxml" from store
2014-08-25 00:05:32, Info CSI 00000326 [SR] Repairing corrupted file [ml:520{260},l:74{37}]"\??\C:\Windows\System32\wdi\perftrack"\[l:24{12}]"authui.ptxml" from store
2014-08-25 00:05:32, Info CSI 00000327 [SR] Repairing corrupted file [ml:520{260},l:76{38}]"\??\C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer"\[l:34{17}]"ie9props.propdesc" from store
2014-08-25 00:05:32, Info CSI 00000328 [SR] Repairing corrupted file [ml:76{38},l:74{37}]"\??\C:\Windows\SysWOW64\wdi\perftrack"\[l:38{19}]"wow64_ieframe.ptxml" from store
2014-08-25 00:05:32, Info CSI 00000329 [SR] Repairing corrupted file [ml:520{260},l:74{37}]"\??\C:\Windows\System32\wdi\perftrack"\[l:28{14}]"LDDMCore.ptxml" from store
2014-08-25 00:05:32, Info CSI 0000032a [SR] Repairing corrupted file [ml:520{260},l:76{38}]"\??\C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer"\[l:30{15}]"pdmproxy100.dll" from store
2014-08-25 00:05:32, Info CSI 0000032c [SR] Repair complete
2014-08-25 00:05:32, Info CSI 0000032d [SR] Committing transaction
2014-08-25 00:05:32, Info CSI 0000032e [SR] Cannot commit interactively, there are boot critical components being repaired
2014-08-25 00:05:32, Info CSI 0000032f [SR] Repairing 6 components
2014-08-25 00:05:32, Info CSI 00000330 [SR] Beginning Verify and Repair transaction
2014-08-25 00:05:32, Info CSI 00000331 [SR] Repairing corrupted file [ml:76{38},l:74{37}]"\??\C:\Windows\SysWOW64\wdi\perftrack"\[l:24{12}]"authui.ptxml" from store
2014-08-25 00:05:33, Info CSI 00000332 [SR] Repairing corrupted file [ml:520{260},l:74{37}]"\??\C:\Windows\System32\wdi\perftrack"\[l:24{12}]"authui.ptxml" from store
2014-08-25 00:05:33, Info CSI 00000333 [SR] Repairing corrupted file [ml:520{260},l:76{38}]"\??\C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer"\[l:34{17}]"ie9props.propdesc" from store
2014-08-25 00:05:33, Info CSI 00000334 [SR] Repairing corrupted file [ml:76{38},l:74{37}]"\??\C:\Windows\SysWOW64\wdi\perftrack"\[l:38{19}]"wow64_ieframe.ptxml" from store
2014-08-25 00:05:33, Info CSI 00000335 [SR] Repairing corrupted file [ml:520{260},l:74{37}]"\??\C:\Windows\System32\wdi\perftrack"\[l:28{14}]"LDDMCore.ptxml" from store
2014-08-25 00:05:33, Info CSI 00000336 [SR] Repairing corrupted file [ml:520{260},l:76{38}]"\??\C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer"\[l:30{15}]"pdmproxy100.dll" from store
2014-08-25 00:05:33, Info CSI 00000338 [SR] Repair complete

I don't know if there's any significance to this, but I have IE10 even though I see a filename above called ie9props.propdesc.

I have also attached the whole sfc log from back when I had the Classic Start Menu auto-start option ticked.

FYI: I was looking back through this thread and noticed that in my 8-25-14 post I gave an incorrect path im describing a solution that worked for me. I have edited the post to show the correct path.

So ... is there a fix for this problem yet? I had the missing icon problem on two W7 machines and 1 W8.1 machine. Uninstalled CS 4.1.0.0 on all three .. no more problem. I really REALLY like CS .. so would really like to have the problem fixed. Thank you in advance.

Sorry, I still cannot reproduce the issue on 7, 8 or 8.1. I don't have a clue what is happening.
Different people report different programs being affected, so likely the issue is not program-specific.

I sincerely thank you for replying. Hopefully you will find a solution .... and following this thread will let me know. Great product. I will continue to hope.

Hello everybody,

Having the same problem "Notification area icons missing at startup or disappear after startup"
I use Windows 7 Home Premium SP1

I tried a lot of solutions found on the Internet like killing explorer in task manager and restart or delete PastIconsStream and IconStreams.
Some working sometimes, some others not really.

The best so far being :

Start your “Task Manager” by pressing ‘Ctrl’+’Shift’+’Esc’ and select the “Users” tab
Select Current Active User
Select Close Session

The session will restart and all icons will show.

It is only now that I found this article showing it could be "Classic Shell" causing the trouble.

So I decided to give it a try and disable "Classic Shell v4.1.0" at startup and the problem went off.
Icons are all back as usual at each restart.

"Classic Shell" is a great program that I wish to keep running but this bug is really annoying.
There must be an interference caused by the program and I really hope that next version will be fixed to avoid this problem.

Some people have reported that version 3.6.8 doesn't have this problem. Do you mind trying it for a few days? You can download it from here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/classic ... elease%29/

Ok Ivo, I'm starting the test and will keep you informed.
All the best

;)

After uninstalling and complete cleanup of ClassicShell 4.1.0 in folders and registry keys, I installed ClassicShell 3.6.8.
So far no problem at all, Windows 7 starts each times with all the system tray icons present.
I don't understand why, but everything looks fine.

Have a nice day.

To anybody experiencing this problem - While I have no clue what is causing it, I have not given up on figuring it out. At this stage all I can do is try things blindly until something works.

The beta version 4.2.0 has an extra hidden setting to enable one such experiment. If you are seeing the problem and you are using Windows 7, please try the following:

• Run regedit and go to HKCU\Software\IvoSoft\ClassicStartMenu\Settings
• Create a new DWORD value named "CompatibilityFixes" and set it to 8
• Restart and keep an eye on the problem

Let me know if things with the tray icons improve.

Note: As a side effect of this experiment you won't be able to customize the start button. You will always see the Windows 7's own button.

Hello,
i use Win 7, 64 Bit and have the same Problems since a few months.
I tried all Solutions in this Forum, the Problems are still present, the Icons are dissapearing at logon. If i Change the user and logon again, the Icons are there.



I hope, that the Problems are fixed in the new Version 4.2.0.
I hope, that the new Version is coming soon.
What else can i do?
Thanks for your answer.

Did you try version 4.2.0 and the new registry setting?

no, i tried 4.10 only.

i tried Version 4.20, the same Problems.
Now, i installed Version 3.6.8, it is working, no more Problems.
Thanks a lot for your answers!

With version 4.2.0, did you try to set the CompatibilityFixes registry value to 8?

If anyone finds a reliable way to simply reproduce the bug (if they observe something specific is causing it or not causing it), please share it here. I can't repro it here either, so unless the bug happens, there is no way to study what is happening and fix it. None of my notification area (tray) icons have disappeared ever.

_________________
Links to some general topics:

● Compare Start Menus

● Read the Search box usage guide.

I am a Windows enthusiast and helped a little with Classic Shell's testing and usability/UX feedback.

I installed the latest version of Classic Shell and also experience the disappearing tray icons problem. However as a solution I installed Startup Delayer program and set to delay Classic Shell from starting by 1 minute 30 seconds after PC loading screen (entering desktop) to allow all programs/icons to load and...voila! Those disappearing tray icons return in full force.

What version of Windows do you have?

Apology for the late reply. I use Windows 7 Professional Edition.

Hi!


I am using Classic Start Menu 3.6.1 on Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit.
I have discovered that this may be the cause of icons not appearing in my system tray even though they are customized to "show icon and notifications". Is there a way to turn off the part of Classic Shell that affects the system tray?

Thanks!

Janet

We haven't found a way to reliably reproduce the issue of tray icons getting affected. You could try to upgrade to the latest Classic Shell version (4.2.5 or 4.2.7 beta) and see if it gets rid of your issue.

_________________
Links to some general topics:

● Compare Start Menus

● Read the Search box usage guide.

I am a Windows enthusiast and helped a little with Classic Shell's testing and usability/UX feedback.

Thanks for your prompt reply!

I hesitated upgrading because of the poster who wrote: "Afteruninstalling and complete cleanup of ClassicShell 4.1.0in folders and registry keys, I installedClassicShell 3.6.8." and found that everything then worked fine........ Maybe I should upgrade to 3.6.8...?

What is the best way to do an upgrade and then a roll-back if necessary?
Can this be done without having to reset all my customizations for Classic Explorer and Classic Start Menu? I set them years ago--it would take ages for me to figure out and reset all the settings individually.....

You have a way in Classic Shell to save all settings to XML and import them in any version. Use the big Backup button in Settings to do that.

_________________
Links to some general topics:

● Compare Start Menus

● Read the Search box usage guide.

I am a Windows enthusiast and helped a little with Classic Shell's testing and usability/UX feedback.

The best way is to do a backup of your settings XML, then download the installer of the latest version and install it on top of the current version without uninstalling the previous version. Classic Shell migrates the settings automatically from the older version to the newer one but if something goes wrong, you can always load the saved settings XML manually to fully restore all settings.

_________________
Links to some general topics:

● Compare Start Menus

● Read the Search box usage guide.

I am a Windows enthusiast and helped a little with Classic Shell's testing and usability/UX feedback.