May 4, 2008

Q. When I try to look at the icons in the lower right of my screen, they keep disappearing making it difficult to see what is there. How can I make them stay visible?

A. You are experiencing one of the things that annoy me about the default settings of XP and Vista.  Apparently, Microsoft believes that the less the average user sees the better, but I dislike it when things are deliberately hidden from me.

When there are icons in this area, called the System Tray, that you haven't clicked on lately, the default setting of Windows will cause them to be hidden. This may be all well and good, but when I want to see what is there, it is very annoying for them to keep disappearing.

Items in this System Tray are indications of programs or portions of programs that are running all the time, usually in the background. Some things, like a anti-virus program, anti-spyware program, your network status, the volume control, etc., may be desirable. But, many programs put their icons there and have parts of them always running for less desirable reasons.

What I consider the worst of these are those that constantly check for updates for themselves. or try to make using the programs they represent easier to use. Many programs just assume that you will consider them the most important thing you have ever installed, and therefore put their icons there without your permission. Some of the worst of these types programs in my opinion are Apple's QuickTime, most HP and other printers, Yahoo messenger, and Microsoft Messenger.

If you have only one program that periodically checks for an update, it may not be too noticeable, but when there five or more, it can become a resource hogging hindrance. If you have ever had a computer turned off for a week or longer, and then turn it on, all this checking for updates becomes obvious. This is especially true if you do not have an internet connection immediately active, and each application causes a delay while it times out from checking for one.

Others applications will leave a small pre-start program running all the time so that when you try to open it, it will start up faster.  On older, slower computers, this may have been an advantage, maybe. But in most current computers, taking a few milliseconds longer for an application to open is not that advantageous for anything but the slow opening program itself. 

OK, enough of my ranting about what I consider ill behaved applications. Apparently, Microsoft anticipated that many applications would like to put their icons in the system tray, so they included a way to hide some of them automatically. They call this feature? "Hide Inactive Icons". What is considered inactive icons are those that the user has not clicked on lately. That means that an important icon for your anti-virus program could be hidden since one rarely if ever will click on it. Fortunately, what is hidden or not hidden if anything is easily programmable.

Right click on a blank space on the task bar and select Properties. An extra step is required on Vista, click on the Notification Area tab. You will see a check box for "Hide inactive icons". Un-checking it will cause all the icons in the system tray to be displayed. Next to this item there is a customize button that becomes active when the Hide inactive icons box is checked . When you click on this, you are given the option to choose any item you want and "Hide when inactive, Hide always or Hide never". Choosing to hide any unused icon may be easier for some than just removing it entirely, but the option to do so has been provided.

Without going into a lot of detail, the fewer icons in the System Tray the better. Too many things starting up when Windows opens will cause longer start up times and slow down overall performance. See HERE for more on this.