Avast hijacking taskbar icons

I’m having a problem with Avast hijacking my taskbar icons and replacing them with the blue ball. So far icons affected include the volume control, wireless network icon, and Omnipass (fingerprint reader). I have the most recent release of Avast. This is on a brand new laptop with WinXP Home. Rebooting usually fixes the problem but it always returns, probably after putting the machine to sleep. Any help would be gratefully appreciated.

avast! doesn’t hijack anything - it’s most likely just Windows hiding some tray icons when they are “inactive”, or something like that. Try to configure the taskbar to show them all.

Besides what Igor said, which avast version are you using?
Which other applications are running, because maybe any of them is ‘crashing’ explorer.exe process and then the icons could be removed from the system tray…

I’ve had this problem quite a few times. The Avast ball replaces the Counterspy taskbar icon, and occasionally, the Counterspy icon gets it’s own back by doing the same. When I move the cursor over the icons, the correct program info flashes up (i.e. while they both might be the blue ball, one says ‘Avast! On-Access Scanner…’ and the other says ‘Counterspy is active’. Weird! Rebooting stops it, at least for a while.
I’m running XP Pro, Avast 4.7.986.

As an update to this, I’ve just updated to 1001 (why have I had to do this manually for the last two program updates, when I have it set to update the definitions and the program automatically??), and on reboot, the second blue ball has taken over the ‘safely remove hardware’ icon for some reason.

To be precise, I updated, rebooted, all ok. I then shut down the PC for a while. On starting up, a pop-up from Avast said that my licence (which expires next February) was invalid, and there was no blue ball. I then rebooted, and the two icons appeared. I have removed it for now by using the second ball to ‘safely remove’ my usb modem. On plugging it back in, I have the usual arrow thing. Whether the ball will return, only time will tell…

4.7.1001 has only just been released (late Yesterday) and program updates are done over a 7 day cycle to balance server load, so if you were to leave it alone at some point in that cycle you would have been notified of a program update availability.

Oh, I see. I manually updated to 986 on Saturday, after noticing it on FileHippo. I guess the updates are coming so fast, the auto updates can’t catch up.

They can… but in seven days cycle as David said.
The autoupdate is working for VPS and for the program itself.

Ok, thank you. Any ideas on the iffy icons? As far as I’m aware, I don’t have any problem with any of my other programs, as they are all active and running, and none of them are new to my system. I don’t have the icons set to ‘disappear’ if inactive.

Are the process running in background and only the icons are missed, or, on contrary, both the icons and the processes are gone. I mean, does avast prevent the other programs to load?

The processes are still running, but with an avast icon. As I said in my recent post about 1001, a second ball had replaced the ‘remove hardware safely’ icon. When I placed the cursor over it, it said “avast! on-Access…”, like the proper ball does, but when I clicked on it, I was able to ‘safely remove’ my usb modem!
When it’s taken over from the Counterspy icon in the past, it still says Counterspy when you place the cursor over it.

Won’t the TweakUI repair icons help?

Sorry, :-[ where do I find that?

Sorry, forget last post. Downloaded it and run it. Time will tell I guess, Many thanks Tech.

I experienced problems in Windows XP with the systray icons getting totally mixed up. The system would show a particular icon in the systray but the mouseover would show the label of the program that should have been there. In other words the wrong icon was being displayed.

I tried all the options I could think of at the time to no avail. I did not think of the TweakUI option. Instead I found on the Internet a method of completely clearing the systray icon cache from the registry and starting it all over again. It worked.

I hope the TweakUI method is successful - please let us know.

I’ve rebooted a couple of times after using TweakUI, and all icons are normal so far. As I said in my first reply to this thread, rebooting sometimes fixes it anyway, and so I’ll let you know how it’s done after a week or so. It’s looking good so far though. Thanks again, Tech.

You’re welcome. As you can see, avast forum is a useful place to visit from time to time (at least) 8)

There is a bug in the latest TweakUi that sets the icons to the wrong size. Instead of setting them to 32 it sets them to 31 I believe. After using TweakUi, you should probably go into the registry to correct the size. I am not sure where this is in the registry but a Google search will tell you. I don’t think this bug affects the systray icons. It just affects the desktop icons.

I downloaded it from the Microsoft site, version 2.10.00, which seems to be okay. I found this

http://windowsxp.mvps.org/repairicons.htm

which is, I assume what you’re talking about.

I checked in the registry, and the settings were correct, so hopefully the bug has been fixed.

Tech - I agree, I think the forum is great, and I regularly check what’s going on. Thankfully, I haven’t had TOO many problems, and so I’ve only had to ask a couple of questions, for which I received loads of help, and I only have the knowledge to answer the simplest questions (and the answers to those have usually already been given!!), so I don’t participate very often. Icons are still ok, so far!

Which Registry key are you referring to? I’ve searched it last time but did not find… maybe I was so asleep that I miss it…

You can participate not only helping… sometimes just sharing good wishes, sometimes posting other good things for the users, etc. etc. Anyway, you’re always welcome 8)