Notification area icons are missing at startup
Published: June 08, 2005Excerpted from Q841571
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Symptom
When you restart the computer, the icons in the notification area are missing. If you log off and log on with the same user account, the icons appear.
Resolution
This behavior can be caused by the Simple Service Discovery Protocol (SSDP). This service discovers Universal Plug and Play devices on your network. To resolve this behavior, follow these steps and disable the SSDP feature:
- Click Start, Run and type Services.msc
- In the Services list, right-click SSDP Discovery Service, and then click Properties.
- On the General tab, in the Startup type drop-down list, click Disabled
- Click OK.
Note When SSDP Discovery service is disabled, new devices on the network cannot be found automatically.
For more information, see this page (external source) titled: Fix Missing System Tray Icons at Windows XP startup.
See also
Notification area icons missing in Vista | The Winhelponline.com Blog