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Why you may need to clean up and reset notification icons in Windows

Windows automatically hides notification area icons that aren't in use, to reduce clutter in the tray area. It builds a list of every icon that has ever appeared in the notification area. Over time, this cache list can grow quite long and disrupt the proper display of icons.

If your notification area icon has suddenly disappeared, or if no icon is shown in the notification area after launching an app that is supposed to display an icon, such as NetWorx, you may need to reset Windows icon cache.

Please note, resetting the cache will remove all settings you set for your icons.

Recommended: Use the batch file to reset the icon cache

The simplest way to reset the notification area icon cache is to use the attached batch file, which automatically deletes the necessary registry entries and restarts the Windows shell for you. After running the batch file, your notification area icon list will be reset, and the icons should display correctly.

Manual method: Reset the icon cache yourself

If you prefer to reset the icon cache manually, follow these steps:

1. Open regedit.exe from the Start menu.
2. Navigate to this registry key
   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\TrayNotify
   and delete the IconStreams and PastIconsStream entries.
3. Navigate to this registry key
   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\TrayNotify
   and delete the IconStreams and PastIconsStream entries.
4. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\NotifyIconSettings and delete the entire key.
5. Restart your computer to apply the changes.

In older versions of Windows only some of these keys may be present.

Attachments:
ResetIconCache.zip

Related articles:

How to close NetWorx before updating or uninstalling it
How to close WiFi Guard before updating or uninstalling it

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