Why Does Windows 11 Keep Hiding My System Tray Icons? (Taskbar Icons Missing)
Has anyone figured out why Windows 11 keeps hiding system tray icons? My taskbar icons go missing constantly, and I can’t get certain apps to stay visible. Sometimes they show up under the taskbar overflow menu, sometimes they completely disappear from the notification area, and sometimes they only show up after a restart. I’ve searched everywhere for answers like: “Windows 11 taskbar icons missing” “system tray icons keep disappearing” “hidden notification area icons” “apps not showing in system tray Windows 11” “Bluetooth/Wi-Fi/Volume icon missing” “Windows 11 keeps auto-hiding tray icons” It seems like this issue happens after Windows updates or changes in the settings menu. I’ve already checked Select which icons appear on the taskbar, but Windows still hides them. Restarting Explorer sometimes fixes it, but the icons eventually vanish again. I’ve also seen mentions of registry keys like IconStreams and PastIconsStream, but I’m not sure if editing those is safe. Is there a reliable fix to stop Windows 11 from auto-hiding system tray icons? Why do my notification area icons randomly disappear, refuse to stay pinned, or only show when clicked? Any solutions or troubleshooting steps would be greatly appreciated.
Windows 11 Partitions
Recently I bought a new computer because Windows 10 is no longer supported. It came with Windows11 Pro installed. When I ran setup it partitioned my SSD into two drives. The second drive is called Data. Does Windows use this drive for anything? If not, can I delete the second drive so I can increase the size of the primary drive? Otherwise I will have no use for over half my 512 Gb SSD. I have attached a screenshot of Disk Manager above.
Can't disable automatic updates - causes severe productivity issues
I've tried everything I can find to disable auto updates and they keep showing back up. Despite setting updates to "Pause for 5 weeks" my machine did an update last night. My issue is I set processing jobs to run overnight and Windows kills them to do the updates. This morning I've lost about 10 hours of compute time because the job I started last night was killed in favor of a Windows update. So now I'm a day behind on that deliverable because of a Windows update. Can someone at Microsoft please figure out how to prevent this kind of productivity loss. It is entirely unnecessary. At a minimum, just throw up a dialog box that confirms the user's approval to start the update.Link to windows does not allow removal of old devices
On Samsung my Samsung Phone, the Link to windows app display my laptop 3 times. One is active, the other two are inactive. I assume there are duplicates because of resetting that laptop to factory defaults a couple of times since I got it 5 years ago. The problem is I cannot remove the old ones. They show as disconnected. There is no option to remove them. I use the copy/paste function across devices (very useful), but every time I copy/paste and get irritating messages on the phone saying 'cannot copy to xxxxxx device' where that devices is the laptop the phone is connected to. It's saying it cannot copy to the device I'm actually connected to, but it's referrring to old definition of that device. I've tried many ways to remove these old versions of the devices. For the last attempt, I removed the current connection from the phone, completely removed it from the laptop, then on the phone I cleared the data and cache for the link to windows app, then successfully re-paired the device. The old versions if device came back too! I believe the information is store in my Microsoft Account, but it's not externalised. Additionally, in my list of devices where my Microsoft Account is in use, it doesn't show the either the laptop or the phone, just a desktop PC and an Xbox. There clearly needs to be some way to permanently remove the connected history, particularly when the laptop has been used before but was reset. I've seen this issue reported many times, but there seems to be no way to fix this problem.Can not unlock laptops after meeting, when laptop is offline then it works.
Users can sometimes not unlock laptop after break. Since a few weeks we have this ugly problem in our company domain. Users who went in a meeting or go for lunch can sometimes not unlock their laptops when they come back. Windows often says "Password incorrect" or "your password have been changed on an other device" but the password is not wrong. There are users they had this issue a few times in the last weeks, other users never had it since we know about this issue. People work in the same team with the same group policies there are no differences but some people in the team have it, other never had it. When we plug out the network cable and also Wi-Fi on these computers the users then can log in, then the stored credentials are used. We already checked the power settings so that the laptop does not shutdown the network adapters but that does not fix the problem. Domain controllers are always reachable there are no replication errors, or network timeouts. We use Windows 11 25H2 in our company network.
How come all of a sudden all of my Earbuds and Headphones skip audio?
Hi, I like to use Earbuds when on my PC, (Windows 11 Pro) I never had this issue until about 2 weeks ago. I cannot use any Earbuds or Headphones because the audio skips so badly that I miss out on the majority of what is being said, I do not know what to do. I live chatted with a Microsoft rep who then connected to my PC and didn't know what to do. So, he restored an old backup - and that worked for 1 day. Then the next day I turned my PC on and boom it was back. Does anyone know what is happening or what I can do to resolve this? I play 1 game, and when I do it's just massive skips and it is incredibly annoying. I would greatly appreciate anyone's help on resolving this please. It has become unbearable. Please help! Thank you, - Jon
Issue With Opening Browsers After Windows Update
Update was done on Monday. Since then, we are unable to go to certain websites, we get an ERROR 505 or just a blank, white page while it shows the page is loading, it just never does load. I tried to uninstall the update to go back to normal, but Windows now says there are no updates to uninstall. I have gotten an IT guy involved and he tried to solve it as well but he says it must be a bug in the Windows update as everything was fine until the update happened. I have tried the following...note that I also restarted the computer after each attempt to fix this issue: Uninstall the updates (cannot uninstall them though) ran my antivirus ran the computer in safe mode cleaned out the cache, browsing history, downloads and cookies uninstalled firefox and google chrome then reinstalled them troubleshoot Windows troubleshoot Microsfot Exchange modify/fix Microsoft Exchange tested internet connection tested that the websites were not down or having issues (they were not) tested the websites on different computers (they are all on Windows 11 - no issues) Nothing has worked. Still error 505 or just a blank page. the system is a Windows 11 The other two computers are fine (we did not update them). HELP!
ASUS Update Check Removal Tool
NOTE: Right-click on the following batch files after saving them, and click "Run as administrator". Use Notepad to create this file on your desktop or another folder: ASUS_Update_Check_Remove.bat @ECHO OFF SETLOCAL REM WHEN THE NETWORK STACK IS DISABLED IN UEFI / BIOS, AND ARMORY CRATE IS ENABLED, THE UEFI WILL LEAVE BEHIND AN UPDATE SERVICE, WHICH CANNOT BE REMOVED WITH THE ARMORY CRATE UNINSTALL TOOL, AND HAS TO BE REMOVED MANUALLY, WITH THE ASUS ARMORY CRATE BEING DISABLED IN UEFI / BIOS BEFOREHAND CD /D "%~dp0" SET ASUS_UPDTCHK_RMV_RSTRT_VAL=0 IF [%1]==[] GOTO ASUS_UPDTCHK_RMV_RSTRT_LBL_ IF %1==ASUS_UPDTCHK_RMV_RESTART (SET ASUS_UPDTCHK_RMV_RSTRT_VAL=1) :ASUS_UPDTCHK_RMV_RSTRT_LBL_ IF %ASUS_UPDTCHK_RMV_RSTRT_VAL% EQU 0 GOTO ASUS_UPDTCHK_RMV_END_LBL_ IF %Processor_Architecture%==ARM64 SET SDEL_EXT_=SDELETE64A IF %Processor_Architecture%==AMD64 SET SDEL_EXT_=SDELETE64 IF %Processor_Architecture%==x86 SET SDEL_EXT_=SDELETE NET STOP AsusUpdateCheck TASKKILL /IM AsusUpdateCheck.exe /T /F SC DELETE AsusUpdateCheck PowerShell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command "& {Remove-Item -Path 'HKLM:\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\AsusUpdateCheck' -Recurse -Force}" IF EXIST "%SystemRoot%\System32\%SDEL_EXT_%.EXE" %SDEL_EXT_% -ACCEPTEULA -Q -R -NOBANNER "%SystemRoot%\System32\AsusDownLoadLicense.exe" "%SystemRoot%\System32\AsusUpdateCheck.exe" IF NOT EXIST "%SystemRoot%\System32\%SDEL_EXT_%.EXE" DEL /Q "%SystemRoot%\System32\AsusDownLoadLicense.exe" "%SystemRoot%\System32\AsusUpdateCheck.exe" :ASUS_UPDTCHK_RMV_END_LBL_ IF %ASUS_UPDTCHK_RMV_RSTRT_VAL% EQU 0 (CALL ASUS_Update_Check_Remove.bat ASUS_UPDTCHK_RMV_RESTART >nul 2>&1) ENDLOCAL MOVE NUL 2>&0
