There's a little button there that looks like an arrow - that will reveal "inactive icons". If you don't like that feature, right click on the taskbar and go to properties. There is a checkbox for "hide inactive icons".

Yes, I do know of the existence of the "hide inactive icons" option, and it's turned off. Even if I turn it on and manually set the icons to "always show" in the options, they're still not visible. Any more bright ideas?

I have noticed the same problem with my machine as well. I'm running WinXP Corporate. This probable only occurs at random. When the problem does occur the only icons that do appear are the ones showing my active network connections. The programs are running they just don't appear in the taskbar. Only solution i have found for this is to log off (no user switching) and log in again. I find this extremly annoying. Another problem i noticed is that when exiting out of certain games all my icons and web content (in folders) has disappeared.

In my case, it takes a considerable ammount of time before all the taskbar icons appear after logon...no clue why.

Yep, I get it too.
 
Ususally its ICQ who is the main victim, usually disappearing when there is a message flashing, so it leaves an empty space in the systray, but I can still access it.
 
Also I noticed today that for some reason Zone Alarm and NAV 2002 both disappeared too. Managed to get ZA back on there, but NAV is running somewhere in the background.
 
I never had any of these problems with the beta's or RC's.
 
I've noticed it mostly occurs when mode switching the resolution, like starting a game. Might be a side effect of the visual themes or something.
 
Homer

I get the exact same prob, but coupled with that my taskbar will take ages to load up. Windows XP will load into my desktop fine, I can go to My Computer etc, but the taskbar itself takes about a minute to load up. If I move my mouse cursor over the taskbar all I get is an hourglass, and I have to sit and wait for the silly thing to load. Rarely it will load right away, but when it does load right away I always get a 'An Error Has Been Generated' with the option to send the error report to MS. Anyone have any clue what might be causing this?
BTW, I have disabled all programs from starting up, and it did this on a fresh install of windows w/ no extra software loaded. Bugs the heck outta me.

This is getting a little annoying for me now. On bootup, sometimes I also have to wait for up to a minute for the taskbar to become usable.
 
Also, as I said before, XP loses some of the icons. This morning it lost the Speaker and the Network Connection, even though both are enabled to show.
 
I also find that if they are animated, they sometimes freeze halfway through, almost as if XP's attention is drawn elsewhere. Typical examples of this are ICQ disappearing when a message comes through, and my DNS client trying to connect but stopping halfway, even though it has actually connected.
 
I disabled Odigo starting on bootup as that seemed to cause a problem too.
 
Very strange.
 
Homer

The other day I read this post and thought "Glad mine isn't doing that." Now mine is! : )

It's kind of heartening (but also slightly worrying) to see that so many other people share my problem ; )
 
Still no solutions?

I'm still not sure exactly what's causing the problem, but I did find out some interesting things.. When I pulled out my network card my taskbar would load perfectly fine, no wait or anything.
 
I then switched my network card w/ a new 3com card (3C905CX), and at first my taskbar would load fine. However, after about 3 reboots I started getting the same problem again. I switched my network card to different slots, and fooled around w/ my bios pci/pnp settings and windows xP settings to try and get everything on a seperate IRQ. I was successful in this (although I kept running into a problem where WinXP would remove my forced settings and start assigning multiple devices to the same IRQ), and so far my taskbar, and system tray icons are loading up fine.
 
I also have a Sound Blaster Live 5.1, and from some stories I've read about its problems with IRQ conflicts I suspect it may have something to do with this. I'm also guessing there's some buggy code with the way XP deals with IRQ sharing, or possibly the way it deals with network cards that are sharing IRQs.. Who knows.

Have you guys played around with the settings at all in Xp?
 
The network connection no longer comes up automatically.
Neither does your 'precious' volume control
 
You can to go to the control panel ..do volume properties ..and then on one of the tabs ..there is an option to make it appear in your task bar.
 
The same for showing your network connection ie. the network card versus an ADSL auntheticated connection which is shown on the taskbar anyway.
 
No doubt some other things dont appear on the bar anymore which is good. IT was getting too crowded anyway.

icq was ok until today...
it DISAPPERARD. no trace at ALL!
i really hope someone finds a way to get it back...

I too is having probs with the task bar taking for ever to load up on my BP6 machine.
I had to reimage my cuv4x-d machine coz it was bsoding all over tha place.
 
You don't think it does this because it finds another pc on the network with the same serial key do you?

Quote:
You don't think it does this because it finds another pc on the network with the same serial key do you?

Shouldn't make any difference. In a real life corporate network, every machine on the network will have the same serial key!

AndyF