Taskbar notification area and 4.7.981

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

After installing the recent update and restart some of my programs no longer show up on the taskbar notification area…

This includes
ATI Tray Tool
Creative Volume control

The processes are running but but doesn’t show up in the tray anymore after the newest program.

I’ve tried restoring all taskbar setting to defaults but that didn’t help.

Thank you

2

The avast update or installation for that matter shouldn’t have any effect on the taskbar icons.

There has however been a windows security update that by all accounts conflicts with the creative sound cards, I don’t know if this might have had an effect, but since t also effects another icon ATI Tray Tool perhaps not.

Does clicking the < Show Hidden Icons reveal anything ?
If not you may have to go into the control of these applications and change the settings and reset the tray icon.

I’m running 4.7.981 and no issues with the tray icons, nor can I remember any try icon issues in the beta testing that was done by forum members prior to this release.

3

Do you mean after updating avast the icon of other applications have gone away?
I shouldn’t happen in anyway…

Are you using any startup manager tool? Or cleaner? Or security program?
If you install that applications again (or check through Control Panel to show the icon in system tray), will it help?

4

No, not using any type of startup management program.

The problem occured right after I updated (green avast notification popup) and restart.

Clicking on “show hidden icons” reveal processes that usualy always show up but only VRDB generator, avast on acces and nvidia active armor firewall show.

Before the restart for the avast program update both creative and ati tray tool showed up. I havn’t made any changes to the system since the update of avast to 4.7.981

Thanks again

:EDIT:
I tried uninstalling then reinstalling ATI Tray Tools and after the installation the icon showed up in the tray but after a restart the problem persisted and the icon dosn’t show again. I can’t acess the ATI Tray Tool’s options and setup because the program’s settings can only be acess through the tray icon. When I go to run the program the icon shows up for 1 second then instantly disappears.

Should I try uninstalling and reinstalling avast and see what results i get?

5

Ok… we believe you… but right now, I see no other way intead of checking why this weird behavior occurred instead of looking into Control Panel and see if Creative and ATI Tray tool have their icon set to be shown…

6

Ok

I went into task bar properties.

uncheck the “hide inactive icons”

in customize notification on the behavior colum I change everything to “always show”

still nothing :frowning:

7

Open avast antivírus and go to configuration. There’s a menu inside avast antivírus. Above general, there’s a option that show Avast icon. If checked, un check it. May be you need re-start. When re-starts, re-do this and check it. I’ve seen problems that you resolve with this “crazy” method

8

Tried your suggestion (avast: settins → apperance) and restart. All it did was hide/unhide the avast on-acess icon.

Thanks for the help though.

:EDIT:

I’ve gone ahead and used “system restore” at a point roughly 5 hours before the avast update (at around 12:11PM pst)

Both ATi Tray Tool and the Creative Volume Control have returned and everything seems to be normal. But right after restore Avast asked me to restart the system. I’m concerned that by doing so will revert the problem back again. I’ll wait for any suggestion before i proceed.

Thank you.

9

This issue has absolute nothing relative to Avast. The evidence is this happens with me (in the past and recently) and now I’m not with Avast! installed and my pc was reformatted. This uses to happen after e.g activating Emule or after install a new program wich uses the sys tray. Usually this issue pass in time and everything backs to normal. It looks like a Microsoft issue.

10

Pajama Guy, I’d suggest uninstalling avast (temporarily) and see if it solves the problem. If it doesn’t you’ll have to start elsewhere. If it does, though, reinstall avast and we can try to do some further investigation.

BTW what OS are you using?

Thanks
Vlk

11

Thank you,

I’m running under XP SP2

Alright after some reinstallation and restores i’m 99.9% certain this “might” have somthing to do with the installation of 4.7.981 update.

step by step of what I did (to encounter the problem again)

  1. restored the pc to pre 4.7.981, all icons in the tray work fine. After restoration and subsiquent restart, Avast ask me to restart.
  2. Instead of restarting I uninstalled Avast, restart.
  3. redownloaded 4.7.942 and installed latest !AVS update(not program). Everything in the tray works fine and normal as it should at this point.
  4. Through avast I use the “program update” in updating, Avast program downloads and installs the program updates, ask for restart.
  5. After restart tray icons disapeared again.

I have no idea whats going on, the only prevention for me is to not update to 4.7.981

I’ll try uninstalling Avast after the 4.7.981 update and icons disapeared next.

Thanks for the help.

:EDIT: Ok I uninstalled Avast 4.7.981 and after restart the icons came back in tray.

12

Vlk, this is a mystery to me… can you continue helping here? Thanks.

13

Let’s try a small experiment.

Please open regedit, go to HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\avast! Antivirus and delete the value called “Group”. Then restart the computer and report if the change had any effect on the issue.

Thanks
Vlk

14

Ok I deleted the “group” value like you suggested, restart (using 4.7.981)

The both icons are back and function properly. :smiley:

Yep. That seems to fix it.

So what was wrong that I had to delete that?

Thank you very much for the help again.

15

Man, I curious… seems this is related to the avast startup services dependencies…

16

Well the Group element was what we trialled before for the avast fast start and no one reported any issues with the system tray icons ???

17
Please open regedit, go to HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\avast! Antivirus and delete the value called "Group". Then restart the computer and report if the change had any effect on the issue.
Ok I deleted the "group" value like you suggested, restart (using 4.7.981) The both icons are back and function properly. Yep. That seems to fix it.
Ok, I have to surrender to the facts, but it is still a fact that this issue happens (with me at least, at home and at work) even without Avast! installed. Well, I'll follow the clue listed here.
18

If you haven’t got avast installed then this registry Key and ‘Group’ Value shouldn’t exist. The ‘Group’ value has only been added with the latest Program Update (and for those using the previous beta version). So even if you had a previous version of avast installed at some time this value still wouldn’t be there, in your case it has to be something else.

19
If you haven't got avast installed then this registry Key and 'Group' Value shouldn't exist.
OK David, the value indeed does not exist, I referred to the "fenomenon" of loss of icons alone with or wihout Avast! installed ;). And I came to think (and say :-[) that Avast should not be "suspected" to cause the issue.
in your case it has to be something else.
So I'll follow the clues, named startup services dependencies and keys and values related to icons in sys tray.
20

i had the same problem with the disappearing taskbar icons but i followed this advice

Open avast antivírus and go to configuration. There's a menu inside avast antivírus. Above general, there's a option that show Avast icon. If checked, un check it. May be you need re-start. When re-starts, re-do this and check it.
and after several reboots on my XP SP2 system it has not reoccurred.