Tuesday, October 4, 2016

Solved: Missing or Grayed Out Network Icons in System Tray, Windows 10

Ahoy from Amoy! (Historic Xiamen).

While Windows 10 is certainly better than Windows 8 (though I loved Windows 7), I've had lots of the Blue Screens of Death with Windows 10 (Windows 7 never had them). And after almost every major update, I have lots of glitches and issues I have to fix. One of the most frustrating is that the Network or Internet icons disappear from the system tray and they are grayed out in settings so I cannot turn them on. This has happened several times on both my computer and my wife's (Dell and Toshiba).

In early September, I explained an easy way to usually restore missing system tray internet or wifi icons-but it did not always work. Now I've found a surefire guaranteed fix for missing internet or wifi icons in the System Tray, even when they're grayed out in the settings: delete their values in the registry files and reboot.  This has fixed the problem in both our Dell and Toshiba computers.

Though I'm hesitant to edit Windows Registry Files, this operation is painless and foolproof.
  1. Open "Run" window: at the same time, hold both the Windows Key and the “R” key.
  2. Open "Registry Edit": Type “regedit“ and hit “OK“.
  3. Step by step, go through the registry until you reach the last step: Tray Notify
  1. HKEY_CURRENT_USER]
  2. Classes
  3. Local Settings
  4. Software
  5. Microsoft
  6. Windows
  7. CurrentVersion
  8. TrayNotify
            Find both Iconstreams and PastIconStream
            Right-click and Delete each of them.
            Close the registry editor and reboot. 
The computer will restore new, uncorrupted entries for Tray Notify and the Internet Wifi icons will have magically reappeared in your Systray (Taskbar Notification Area).
Enjoy Amoy!

Dr. Bill
School of Management, Xiamen University
Amazon eBook
"Discover Xiamen"
www.amoymagic.com

Bill Brown Xiamen University www.amoymagic.com

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