Why does my volume control Icon keeps removing itself?

May 14, 2006 12:01 PM

Long time listener First Time caller, can someone please explain to me why my volume control Icon on my task bar keeps removing itself. (More inside).

I'm running XP professonal everything is up to date. And I am irritated that my volume control Icon keeps removing itself. I literally have to go into the control panel (sound amd audio properties) unclick and then reclick and apply the place the "Place the volume icon in the taskbar" option over and over. I have searched several forums and not found and answer and was excited to use ask mefi.
Thanks.

posted by Unregistered User to computers & internet (12 comments total)

Have you clicked the '<<' next to the tray icons, in case it was inactive?
posted by kcm at 12:05 PM on May 14, 2006

Thanks, but Yes. It's not inactive, it's gone. Till I reapply it.
posted by Unregistered User at 12:21 PM on May 14, 2006

right click the < and goto customize notifications.br>
then make it so volume is always show
posted by moochoo at 12:48 PM on May 14, 2006

ok so i should of checked the preview formatting messed up ignore the .br> bit
posted by moochoo at 12:49 PM on May 14, 2006

Does this help? I have not tried it -- just throwing it out there.
posted by JPowers at 12:50 PM on May 14, 2006

Thanks guys I have tried all the above, so far I'll just have to wait and see if they work as it's there as of now.
posted by Unregistered User at 1:16 PM on May 14, 2006

The answer by Shahrukh Merchant on the second page of this thread is being called the definitive answer by some people later in the thread. Read the whole thread, there are lots of possible answers.

Also, googling "task bar" volume control icon keeps disappearing xp brings up some other forums where people have had the same problem, so it's not just you. Good luck.
posted by iconomy at 1:58 PM on May 14, 2006

Could be a Group Policy setting, if this is a work computer or if you've ever messed with Local Policies.

To find out for sure whether this behaviour is Group Policy related, do this:

1. Do whatever you have to do to make the volume control system tray icon appear.

2. In the Start->Run box, type

gpupdate

to refresh whatever Group Policy settings are currently applied to your machine. If your volume control immediately disappears, it's pretty much certain that Group Policy is the cause. If not, look elsewhere.
posted by flabdablet at 4:36 PM on May 14, 2006

The solution in iconomy's first link didn't cure the problem for me (my power meter also won't stay). Also, when I typed in the prescribed string in regedit, it comes up in Chinese characters on the msconfig/startup list. My resident Chinese person says it has no meaning in Chinese, but is gibberish. I suspect that this is something Spybot did during the "confirm registry change" operation, but who the hell knows.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 5:33 PM on May 14, 2006

I have the same problem, with a laptop computer; I'm pretty sure it's a driver repeatedly un-checking whatever registry entry keeps the thing there. Unfortunately I haven't found a good solution, either.
posted by fake at 9:35 PM on May 14, 2006

I'm sad to report that none of these solutions have worked ;-(
I guess I'll just have to keep reseting it....I hate windoz sometimes.
posted by Unregistered User at 5:04 PM on May 20, 2006

Long time reader, third time responder...

I have this same problem. I suspect it's due to that at one point I had a sound card driver which replaced the windows volume control with its own thing, and is still making sure the windows one doesn't show up. My half-assed solution is to use "run" and type sndvol32 (or you could make a quickstart link to it).
posted by alexei at 4:11 AM on July 24, 2006