Topic: Items in system tray dropping out?

[PhilTheFish]

Morning all,

Had my new PC for a few days now (Compaq, P4 2.8Ghz, 512Mb RAM, Geforce 5200 GFX etc). Everythings working fine (and fast compared to my Celeron 766Mhz!), but one thing I have noticed is that occassionally the PC seems to 'blip'. Everything clears out of the system tray and then comes back in within a couple of seconds. Internet connection stays connected and nothing closes.

I'm running XP home. Anyone else get this?

Phil

[Sandra]

You arent referring to the "Hiding inactive icons" part are you Phil ?

[PhilTheFish]

Thanks for the reply Sandra,

No, it's not the hiding inactive icons (which I do use). Everything in the system tray just disappears for a split second, the screen seems to refresh, and then the icons come back into the system tray one at a time. As I said, nothing seems to be affected. Just wondered whether anyone else has had it?

Phil

[Adept]

Sounds like Explorer is crashing and restarting Phil

Have a look at the Event Viewer (Control Panel, Administrative Tools) Appliocation or System Logs, to see if there are any events logged regarding this which may help to identify the problem.

[Simon]

There was a patch issued for a similar problem some time ago, but if you have all the Windows Updates, I would have thought it would have bene included.  Anyway, I had roughly the same problem a while ago, although it was slightly different in that my system tray icons didn't reappear.  I downloaded the patch and it solved it, so it might be worth a try, Phil.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;329692

* Simon edited to fix url.

[PhilTheFish]

Just checked the event viewer. No application problems, but the system logs showed a pile of errors - Source 'IPNATHLP' and event '32003'.

This mean anything to anyone??

[Sandra]

Are you networked Phil ?

According to this its a NAT problem  

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/support/ee/result.aspx?prodname=windows%20operating%20system&lcid=1033&evtid=32003&evtsrc=ipnathlp&prodver=5.2

[PhilTheFish]

No, not networked although I have got network card fitted. I've not noticed it happening for a few days now, I'll wait for SP2 to come out before I download any patches (for a problem that may or may not exist!)

Thanks
Phil

[PhilTheFish]

'tis definitely explorer crashing. Noticed it yesterday when Explorer stopped responding. On hitting the 'end now' button, the system tray icons disappeared and came back in (same as the blips I'd noticed beforehand).

Any ideas on a fix, or should I see if SP2 puts it right?

Phil

[Simon]

Phil, if you want to send me an e-mail address, to simon@pc-pals.com, I have a patch that cured the Explorer problem for me, which I could return to you.